Testing the Pretrained Retrained Model

Table of Contents

• 1  Set-Up Imports
• 2  Load Models
  • 2.1  Load Pretrained Tokenizer
  • 2.2  Load Trained Model
  • 2.3  Create Pipeline
• 3  Testing metaverse-politics-disinformation-society.txt
  • 3.1  Load Dataset
  • 3.2  Testing the Trained Model
  • 3.3  Annotate
• 4  Overkill

Set-Up Imports

from transformers import pipeline
from transformers import AutoTokenizer
from transformers import DataCollatorWithPadding
from transformers import AutoModelForSequenceClassification, TrainingArguments, Trainer
from transformers import PreTrainedModel
from transformers.pipelines.pt_utils import KeyDataset
import torch

from tqdm.auto import tqdm

from datasets import Dataset, DatasetDict, load_dataset
from datasets import load_metric

from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split
from sklearn.metrics import cohen_kappa_score

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
import logging
from glob import glob
from os import path
import functools

from IPython.display import HTML, display

import spacy
from spacy import displacy

Load Models

Load Pretrained Tokenizer

model_checkpoint = "distilbert-base-uncased"
category_codes = dict(enumerate(['Claim', 'Concluding Statement', 'Counterclaim', 'Evidence', 'Lead', 'Position', 'Rebuttal']))
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_checkpoint, use_fast=True)

Load Trained Model

model_path = r"models_gitignored/distilbert-base-uncased-finetuned-sentence-classification/checkpoint-12626"
loaded_model = AutoModelForSequenceClassification.from_pretrained(model_path, id2label=category_codes)
loaded_model

DistilBertForSequenceClassification(
  (distilbert): DistilBertModel(
    (embeddings): Embeddings(
      (word_embeddings): Embedding(30522, 768, padding_idx=0)
      (position_embeddings): Embedding(512, 768)
      (LayerNorm): LayerNorm((768,), eps=1e-12, elementwise_affine=True)
      (dropout): Dropout(p=0.1, inplace=False)
    )
    (transformer): Transformer(
      (layer): ModuleList(
        (0): TransformerBlock(
          (attention): MultiHeadSelfAttention(
            (dropout): Dropout(p=0.1, inplace=False)
            (q_lin): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=768, bias=True)
            (k_lin): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=768, bias=True)
            (v_lin): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=768, bias=True)
            (out_lin): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=768, bias=True)
          )
          (sa_layer_norm): LayerNorm((768,), eps=1e-12, elementwise_affine=True)
          (ffn): FFN(
            (dropout): Dropout(p=0.1, inplace=False)
            (lin1): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=3072, bias=True)
            (lin2): Linear(in_features=3072, out_features=768, bias=True)
          )
          (output_layer_norm): LayerNorm((768,), eps=1e-12, elementwise_affine=True)
        )
        (1): TransformerBlock(
          (attention): MultiHeadSelfAttention(
            (dropout): Dropout(p=0.1, inplace=False)
            (q_lin): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=768, bias=True)
            (k_lin): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=768, bias=True)
            (v_lin): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=768, bias=True)
            (out_lin): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=768, bias=True)
          )
          (sa_layer_norm): LayerNorm((768,), eps=1e-12, elementwise_affine=True)
          (ffn): FFN(
            (dropout): Dropout(p=0.1, inplace=False)
            (lin1): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=3072, bias=True)
            (lin2): Linear(in_features=3072, out_features=768, bias=True)
          )
          (output_layer_norm): LayerNorm((768,), eps=1e-12, elementwise_affine=True)
        )
        (2): TransformerBlock(
          (attention): MultiHeadSelfAttention(
            (dropout): Dropout(p=0.1, inplace=False)
            (q_lin): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=768, bias=True)
            (k_lin): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=768, bias=True)
            (v_lin): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=768, bias=True)
            (out_lin): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=768, bias=True)
          )
          (sa_layer_norm): LayerNorm((768,), eps=1e-12, elementwise_affine=True)
          (ffn): FFN(
            (dropout): Dropout(p=0.1, inplace=False)
            (lin1): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=3072, bias=True)
            (lin2): Linear(in_features=3072, out_features=768, bias=True)
          )
          (output_layer_norm): LayerNorm((768,), eps=1e-12, elementwise_affine=True)
        )
        (3): TransformerBlock(
          (attention): MultiHeadSelfAttention(
            (dropout): Dropout(p=0.1, inplace=False)
            (q_lin): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=768, bias=True)
            (k_lin): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=768, bias=True)
            (v_lin): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=768, bias=True)
            (out_lin): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=768, bias=True)
          )
          (sa_layer_norm): LayerNorm((768,), eps=1e-12, elementwise_affine=True)
          (ffn): FFN(
            (dropout): Dropout(p=0.1, inplace=False)
            (lin1): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=3072, bias=True)
            (lin2): Linear(in_features=3072, out_features=768, bias=True)
          )
          (output_layer_norm): LayerNorm((768,), eps=1e-12, elementwise_affine=True)
        )
        (4): TransformerBlock(
          (attention): MultiHeadSelfAttention(
            (dropout): Dropout(p=0.1, inplace=False)
            (q_lin): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=768, bias=True)
            (k_lin): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=768, bias=True)
            (v_lin): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=768, bias=True)
            (out_lin): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=768, bias=True)
          )
          (sa_layer_norm): LayerNorm((768,), eps=1e-12, elementwise_affine=True)
          (ffn): FFN(
            (dropout): Dropout(p=0.1, inplace=False)
            (lin1): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=3072, bias=True)
            (lin2): Linear(in_features=3072, out_features=768, bias=True)
          )
          (output_layer_norm): LayerNorm((768,), eps=1e-12, elementwise_affine=True)
        )
        (5): TransformerBlock(
          (attention): MultiHeadSelfAttention(
            (dropout): Dropout(p=0.1, inplace=False)
            (q_lin): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=768, bias=True)
            (k_lin): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=768, bias=True)
            (v_lin): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=768, bias=True)
            (out_lin): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=768, bias=True)
          )
          (sa_layer_norm): LayerNorm((768,), eps=1e-12, elementwise_affine=True)
          (ffn): FFN(
            (dropout): Dropout(p=0.1, inplace=False)
            (lin1): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=3072, bias=True)
            (lin2): Linear(in_features=3072, out_features=768, bias=True)
          )
          (output_layer_norm): LayerNorm((768,), eps=1e-12, elementwise_affine=True)
        )
      )
    )
  )
  (pre_classifier): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=768, bias=True)
  (classifier): Linear(in_features=768, out_features=7, bias=True)
  (dropout): Dropout(p=0.2, inplace=False)
)

Create Pipeline

pipe = pipeline("text-classification", model=loaded_model, tokenizer=tokenizer)
pipe

<transformers.pipelines.text_classification.TextClassificationPipeline at 0x224bfc0f040>

Testing metaverse-politics-disinformation-society.txt

Load Dataset

articles_dataset = load_dataset("text", data_files={"valid":[r"datagen/nytimes/metaverse-politics-disinformation-society.txt"]})['valid']

# filter out empty strings
articles_dataset = articles_dataset.filter(lambda example: example['text'])

articles_dataset[1]

Using custom data configuration default-af442e383791019f
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-af442e383791019f\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-af442e383791019f\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-e4ae27236b288068.arrow

{'text': 'In the metaverse, a user might curate a digital avatar, like a character in a video game. Through the eyes of their avatar, they would experience a digital reality as active and engaging as the physical one. Some futurists believe that soon we might attend doctor’s appointments or class there.'}

Testing the Trained Model

lst = []
for i, out in enumerate(tqdm(pipe(KeyDataset(articles_dataset, "text")))):
    print(articles_dataset[i]['text'], out)
    lst.append((articles_dataset[i]['text'], out))

The metaverse is coming. It was once a science-fiction fantasy, most notably in Neal Stephenson’s novel “Snow Crash,” of an all-encompassing virtual universe that would exist alongside the physical one. But technological advances have brought this transformation of human society close enough to reality to demand that we consider its consequences. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.9138175845146179}
In the metaverse, a user might curate a digital avatar, like a character in a video game. Through the eyes of their avatar, they would experience a digital reality as active and engaging as the physical one. Some futurists believe that soon we might attend doctor’s appointments or class there. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4578322768211365}
But while the metaverse could revolutionize work and play, it is essential to remain wary of the dangers that will emerge if it subsumes daily life. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8579508066177368}
Virtual environments will supercharge disinformation campaigns, espionage and surveillance. Struggles for control of the metaverse’s physical infrastructure could very well aggravate global conflicts. And the supranational nature of the metaverse — where real-world borders become far less relevant — could revolutionize the way that individuals perceive and interact with nation-states. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7309265732765198}
A failure to anticipate these possibilities may put the global world order at risk of being replaced by a virtual, and perhaps less virtuous, one. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.48474985361099243}
Today, glimpses of the metaverse are everywhere. Virtual concerts attract record audiences; high-end designers sell virtual fashion; and gaming has become a livelihood for people around the world. Many of the closest corollaries to a full-fledged metaverse are immersive games like Fortnite, Minecraft and Roblox, where players can socialize, shop and attend events in a virtual world. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.6995190382003784}
There’s already evidence that online multiplayer games can enable the spread of disinformation and conspiracy theories. Players can use in-game communication tools to disseminate rumors or “fake news,” targeting others in difficult-to-track ways. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6133278608322144}
The metaverse could allow motivated regimes or extremist groups to go a step farther. Immersive layers of text, voice and visuals in virtual environments would provide new, convincing ways to broadcast misleading or extremist content. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6839314699172974}
In environments where individuals can be represented by pseudonymous avatars, knowing whom to trust with sensitive information will become even more difficult. This could pave the way for a new era of espionage. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5496785640716553}
Digital espionage has already been used by dozens of countries to gain access to commercial intellectual property, proprietary military technology and personal and financial information. A metaverse that contains nearly all aspects of life — work, relationships, assets, identity — could be susceptible to breaches or manipulation from across the globe. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6862616539001465}
Countries and corporations alike will likely also be able to use the metaverse to engage in surveillance with greater sophistication. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8166552186012268}
States have already used facial recognition technology to monitor individuals’ behavior. Companies have used it for device-unlocking or real-time animation. Integration with the metaverse could make it — and the privacy issues it presents — even more ubiquitous. If exploited, that technology could easily be used to surveil any participant around the world. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9590646028518677}
Even the metaverse’s physical infrastructure will likely present new vulnerabilities. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.9636619687080383}
A constellation of technologies, including hardware, computer networks and payment tools, will support the metaverse’s functionality. The countries that maintain control over those technologies will have significant international leverage, just as countries that command things like transport routes or oil supplies do today. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8707076907157898}
China could effectively control the metaverse’s backbone in many corners of the world, thanks to its Digital Silk Road initiative, which finances some countries’ telecommunications systems. Taiwan, which dominates the semiconductor industry that supports computing needs, will likely become even more of a linchpin on the global stage. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8933605551719666}
This kind of physical infrastructure will, in turn, be vulnerable to hacking and supply chain interruptions. If people own property, earn a living, and maintain communities in the metaverse, then hardware shortages or service outages could jeopardize livelihoods or undermine social stability. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.863372266292572}
Despite these threats, the metaverse also has the potential to change global affairs for the better. International diplomacy may just as easily be conducted in virtual embassies. Smaller, less powerful nations may find themselves on a more level playing field, better able to stay in the mix in global affairs or perhaps, to forge unlikely alliances. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.626261830329895}
Virtual environments have also shown promise for activists resisting digital authoritarianism. On Minecraft, Reporters Without Borders has sponsored an Uncensored Library where users could see content by dissident writers that had been censored in countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia and Vietnam. It’s possible that the metaverse may bring new promise for freedom and transparency across borders. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9809460043907166}
But the metaverse’s consequences may be even more radical. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8597285747528076}
If it becomes as all-encompassing as some predict, the metaverse may foster virtual communities, networks and economies that transcend borders and national identities. Individuals might one day identify primarily with metaverse-based decentralized autonomous organizations with their own quasi-foreign policies. Such a transition could mandate the reconceptualization of geopolitical affairs from the ground up. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8217823505401611}
The metaverse may have been born in science fiction, but it’s up to us to write a future grounded in cleareyed reality. {'label': 'Position', 'score': 0.4609670341014862}

Annotate

def displayAnnots(lst):
    test = pd.DataFrame([{"text":i, **j} for i, j in lst])
    texts = []
    labels = []
    for text, label in test.loc[:, :"label"].values:
        if len(labels):
            if labels[-1] == label:
                texts[-1] += " "+text
                continue

        texts.append(text)
        labels.append(label)

    df = pd.DataFrame({"text":texts, "label":labels})
    ents = functools.reduce(lambda lst, new: lst+[lst[-1]+len(new)], df.text, [0])
    df["start"] = ents[:-1]
    df["end"] = ents[1:]
    doc = {
        "text": df.text.sum(),
        "ents": [dict(start=int(row["start"]), end=int(row["end"]), label=row["label"]) for i, row in df.iterrows()],
    }

    labels = ['Lead', 'Position', 'Evidence', 'Claim', 'Concluding Statement', 'Counterclaim', 'Rebuttal']
    colors = ["#ACDDDE", "#CAF1DE", "#E1F8DC", "#FEF8DD", "#FFE7C7", "#F7D8BA", "#D6CDEA"]
    options = {"ents": labels, "colors": dict(zip(labels, colors))}
    displacy.render(doc, style="ent", options=options, manual=True, jupyter=True)
    print('\n\n')

displayAnnots(lst)

The metaverse is coming. It was once a science-fiction fantasy, most notably in Neal Stephenson’s novel “Snow Crash,” of an all-encompassing virtual universe that would exist alongside the physical one. But technological advances have brought this transformation of human society close enough to reality to demand that we consider its consequences. Lead In the metaverse, a user might curate a digital avatar, like a character in a video game. Through the eyes of their avatar, they would experience a digital reality as active and engaging as the physical one. Some futurists believe that soon we might attend doctor’s appointments or class there. Evidence But while the metaverse could revolutionize work and play, it is essential to remain wary of the dangers that will emerge if it subsumes daily life. Rebuttal Virtual environments will supercharge disinformation campaigns, espionage and surveillance. Struggles for control of the metaverse’s physical infrastructure could very well aggravate global conflicts. And the supranational nature of the metaverse — where real-world borders become far less relevant — could revolutionize the way that individuals perceive and interact with nation-states. Evidence A failure to anticipate these possibilities may put the global world order at risk of being replaced by a virtual, and perhaps less virtuous, one. Claim Today, glimpses of the metaverse are everywhere. Virtual concerts attract record audiences; high-end designers sell virtual fashion; and gaming has become a livelihood for people around the world. Many of the closest corollaries to a full-fledged metaverse are immersive games like Fortnite, Minecraft and Roblox, where players can socialize, shop and attend events in a virtual world. Lead There’s already evidence that online multiplayer games can enable the spread of disinformation and conspiracy theories. Players can use in-game communication tools to disseminate rumors or “fake news,” targeting others in difficult-to-track ways. The metaverse could allow motivated regimes or extremist groups to go a step farther. Immersive layers of text, voice and visuals in virtual environments would provide new, convincing ways to broadcast misleading or extremist content. Evidence In environments where individuals can be represented by pseudonymous avatars, knowing whom to trust with sensitive information will become even more difficult. This could pave the way for a new era of espionage. Claim Digital espionage has already been used by dozens of countries to gain access to commercial intellectual property, proprietary military technology and personal and financial information. A metaverse that contains nearly all aspects of life — work, relationships, assets, identity — could be susceptible to breaches or manipulation from across the globe. Evidence Countries and corporations alike will likely also be able to use the metaverse to engage in surveillance with greater sophistication. Claim States have already used facial recognition technology to monitor individuals’ behavior. Companies have used it for device-unlocking or real-time animation. Integration with the metaverse could make it — and the privacy issues it presents — even more ubiquitous. If exploited, that technology could easily be used to surveil any participant around the world. Evidence Even the metaverse’s physical infrastructure will likely present new vulnerabilities. Claim A constellation of technologies, including hardware, computer networks and payment tools, will support the metaverse’s functionality. The countries that maintain control over those technologies will have significant international leverage, just as countries that command things like transport routes or oil supplies do today. China could effectively control the metaverse’s backbone in many corners of the world, thanks to its Digital Silk Road initiative, which finances some countries’ telecommunications systems. Taiwan, which dominates the semiconductor industry that supports computing needs, will likely become even more of a linchpin on the global stage. This kind of physical infrastructure will, in turn, be vulnerable to hacking and supply chain interruptions. If people own property, earn a living, and maintain communities in the metaverse, then hardware shortages or service outages could jeopardize livelihoods or undermine social stability. Evidence Despite these threats, the metaverse also has the potential to change global affairs for the better. International diplomacy may just as easily be conducted in virtual embassies. Smaller, less powerful nations may find themselves on a more level playing field, better able to stay in the mix in global affairs or perhaps, to forge unlikely alliances. Rebuttal Virtual environments have also shown promise for activists resisting digital authoritarianism. On Minecraft, Reporters Without Borders has sponsored an Uncensored Library where users could see content by dissident writers that had been censored in countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia and Vietnam. It’s possible that the metaverse may bring new promise for freedom and transparency across borders. Evidence But the metaverse’s consequences may be even more radical. Rebuttal If it becomes as all-encompassing as some predict, the metaverse may foster virtual communities, networks and economies that transcend borders and national identities. Individuals might one day identify primarily with metaverse-based decentralized autonomous organizations with their own quasi-foreign policies. Such a transition could mandate the reconceptualization of geopolitical affairs from the ground up. Evidence The metaverse may have been born in science fiction, but it’s up to us to write a future grounded in cleareyed reality. Position

Overkill

for filename in glob("datagen/nytimes/*.txt"):
    try:
        display(HTML("<h2>"+filename.split("/")[-1]+"</h2>"))
        articles_dataset = load_dataset("text", data_files={"valid":[filename]})['valid'].filter(lambda example: example['text'])
        lst = []
        for i, out in enumerate(tqdm(pipe(KeyDataset(articles_dataset, "text")))):
            print(articles_dataset[i]['text'], out)
            lst.append((articles_dataset[i]['text'], out))

        displayAnnots(lst)
    except UnicodeDecodeError: print("UnicodeDecodeError")

nytimes\abortion-florida-15-week-ban.txt

Using custom data configuration default-c7f59a738d9c36bc
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-c7f59a738d9c36bc\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-c7f59a738d9c36bc\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-de0874ee69439509.arrow

In 2019 a wave of anti-abortion laws swept this country — a common enough event in the United States, where hundreds of such laws have passed during the last decade. But these grabbed the public’s attention in a way many others hadn’t. Georgia banned abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy, or about two weeks after a missed menstrual period. Ohio, Mississippi, Louisiana and Kentucky did the same, while Missouri banned the procedure at eight weeks. Alabama went the furthest, banning virtually all abortions in the state. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9837203025817871}
Though most of these laws were quickly blocked by the courts — they were obviously unconstitutional under Roe v. Wade — the backlash to their passing was intense, especially in Georgia, a major hub of film and television production. Boycotts were threatened. Netflix and Disney spoke out. The actress Alyssa Milano even tried to get a “Lysistrata”-style sex strike off the ground. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9343194961547852}
Three years later, American reproductive rights are on an even bleaker trajectory. A Supreme Court decision that’s expected to come down this summer is likely to strike down Roe v. Wade, either in deed or in word, making it possible for states with anti-abortion leadership to ban the procedure altogether. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6223578453063965}
It might seem curious, then, that legislators in some conservative-leaning states are spending these months before the likely downfall of Roe working to pass less extreme abortion measures than they did in 2019. Now seems like the time for anti-abortion legislators to go for broke. The fact that some of them are pursuing a different strategy offers clues about what a post-Roe America could look like, and how that landscape could be more complex — and less predetermined — than some Americans had assumed. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9468661546707153}
One of this year’s unmistakable trends in anti-abortion legislation is the 15-week ban. Legislators in Arizona, Florida and West Virginia are now considering bills — which, as the name suggests, would ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, in violation of Roe. At first blush, it might seem these states are simply copying the Mississippi law that the Supreme Court seems likely to uphold this summer, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. But why would they hold back now, rather than try to get more draconian legislation through their legislatures? Florida even considered a six-week ban in recent months but did not end up acting on it. What is going on? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9918694496154785}
The answer is that 15-week bans are a way for Republicans to test public reaction in states that are still somewhat politically contested. Arizona has two Democratic senators and went for Joe Biden in 2020. Elections in Florida have been decided by a handful of votes. Their Republican governors might worry that if they go too far, they might trigger a backlash that could threaten their hold on power. Among the political realities at play: Some battleground states have constitutions that have been interpreted to protect abortion, while in others a majority of people likely oppose criminalizing the procedure. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.941124439239502}
Fifteen-week bans are a trial balloon to see what voters will tolerate — and they may end up being a step toward more bans on abortion from the moment of fertilization. You can bet these lawmakers will be watching the public reaction to the Dobbs decision this summer. If the reaction is relatively muted — as it has been, in much of the country, to Texas’s six-week abortion ban, which has now been in effect for nearly six months — they likely will keep pushing more sweeping laws, until, perhaps, they reach an absolute ban. Conversely, if enough people revolt at the destruction of abortion rights, lawmakers in states like Florida may not feel as comfortable pushing further. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9866886734962463}
This raises the possibility that, at least for a time after Roe is decimated, there could be not two Americas when it comes to abortion, but three: one in which almost any abortion is a crime, one in which abortion is broadly available and one in which abortion is heavily restricted but not altogether unavailable. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7294458150863647}
At some point that third America, if it comes to be, also will be threatened. Because after Roe is gone, leaders in the national anti-abortion movement will push for abortion to be banned from the moment of fertilization. The movement’s ultimate goal has always been the legal recognition of fetal personhood, which would functionally ban abortion across the nation. That would never be possible through the democratic process, but the anti-abortion movement is now betting that it might be through the Supreme Court, with its new conservative supermajority. For decades, anti-abortion leaders have downplayed the fetal personhood goal because doing so made it easier to win public support for their cause, help Republicans get elected and reassure Supreme Court justices anxious about public backlash. But with the makeup of this court — which will not shift once President Biden replaces the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer — they could well get their wish. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9697002172470093}
In the meantime, the anti-abortion movement will want to score as many wins as possible in red and purple states, hoping that 15-week bans will eventually lead to outlawing virtually all abortions. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5033977627754211}
The recent rash of anti-abortion laws reflects the uncertainty of America’s future. The writing may be on the wall for Roe v. Wade, but when it comes to what happens next, the public might still have a say. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.33576706051826477}

In 2019 a wave of anti-abortion laws swept this country — a common enough event in the United States, where hundreds of such laws have passed during the last decade. But these grabbed the public’s attention in a way many others hadn’t. Georgia banned abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy, or about two weeks after a missed menstrual period. Ohio, Mississippi, Louisiana and Kentucky did the same, while Missouri banned the procedure at eight weeks. Alabama went the furthest, banning virtually all abortions in the state. Though most of these laws were quickly blocked by the courts — they were obviously unconstitutional under Roe v. Wade — the backlash to their passing was intense, especially in Georgia, a major hub of film and television production. Boycotts were threatened. Netflix and Disney spoke out. The actress Alyssa Milano even tried to get a “Lysistrata”-style sex strike off the ground. Three years later, American reproductive rights are on an even bleaker trajectory. A Supreme Court decision that’s expected to come down this summer is likely to strike down Roe v. Wade, either in deed or in word, making it possible for states with anti-abortion leadership to ban the procedure altogether. It might seem curious, then, that legislators in some conservative-leaning states are spending these months before the likely downfall of Roe working to pass less extreme abortion measures than they did in 2019. Now seems like the time for anti-abortion legislators to go for broke. The fact that some of them are pursuing a different strategy offers clues about what a post-Roe America could look like, and how that landscape could be more complex — and less predetermined — than some Americans had assumed. One of this year’s unmistakable trends in anti-abortion legislation is the 15-week ban. Legislators in Arizona, Florida and West Virginia are now considering bills — which, as the name suggests, would ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, in violation of Roe. At first blush, it might seem these states are simply copying the Mississippi law that the Supreme Court seems likely to uphold this summer, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. But why would they hold back now, rather than try to get more draconian legislation through their legislatures? Florida even considered a six-week ban in recent months but did not end up acting on it. What is going on? The answer is that 15-week bans are a way for Republicans to test public reaction in states that are still somewhat politically contested. Arizona has two Democratic senators and went for Joe Biden in 2020. Elections in Florida have been decided by a handful of votes. Their Republican governors might worry that if they go too far, they might trigger a backlash that could threaten their hold on power. Among the political realities at play: Some battleground states have constitutions that have been interpreted to protect abortion, while in others a majority of people likely oppose criminalizing the procedure. Fifteen-week bans are a trial balloon to see what voters will tolerate — and they may end up being a step toward more bans on abortion from the moment of fertilization. You can bet these lawmakers will be watching the public reaction to the Dobbs decision this summer. If the reaction is relatively muted — as it has been, in much of the country, to Texas’s six-week abortion ban, which has now been in effect for nearly six months — they likely will keep pushing more sweeping laws, until, perhaps, they reach an absolute ban. Conversely, if enough people revolt at the destruction of abortion rights, lawmakers in states like Florida may not feel as comfortable pushing further. This raises the possibility that, at least for a time after Roe is decimated, there could be not two Americas when it comes to abortion, but three: one in which almost any abortion is a crime, one in which abortion is broadly available and one in which abortion is heavily restricted but not altogether unavailable. At some point that third America, if it comes to be, also will be threatened. Because after Roe is gone, leaders in the national anti-abortion movement will push for abortion to be banned from the moment of fertilization. The movement’s ultimate goal has always been the legal recognition of fetal personhood, which would functionally ban abortion across the nation. That would never be possible through the democratic process, but the anti-abortion movement is now betting that it might be through the Supreme Court, with its new conservative supermajority. For decades, anti-abortion leaders have downplayed the fetal personhood goal because doing so made it easier to win public support for their cause, help Republicans get elected and reassure Supreme Court justices anxious about public backlash. But with the makeup of this court — which will not shift once President Biden replaces the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer — they could well get their wish. Evidence In the meantime, the anti-abortion movement will want to score as many wins as possible in red and purple states, hoping that 15-week bans will eventually lead to outlawing virtually all abortions. Claim The recent rash of anti-abortion laws reflects the uncertainty of America’s future. The writing may be on the wall for Roe v. Wade, but when it comes to what happens next, the public might still have a say. Evidence

nytimes\adhd-dating-relationships.txt

Using custom data configuration default-cb56c9191ae0b312
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-cb56c9191ae0b312\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-cb56c9191ae0b312\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-417af39066938978.arrow

When Chris Lawson began dating Alexandra Salamis, the woman who would eventually become his partner, he was “Mr. Super Attentive Dude,” he said, the type of guy who enjoyed buying cards and flowers for no reason other than to show how much he loved her. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7563069462776184}
But after they moved in together in 2015, things changed. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8570256233215332}
He became more distracted and forgetful. Whether it was chores, planning social events or anything deadline-driven — like renewing a driver’s license — Ms. Salamis, 60, had to continually prod Mr. Lawson to get things done. Invariably, she just ended up doing them herself. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9713975191116333}
“I was responsible for nothing,” Mr. Lawson, 55, admitted. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.36051705479621887}
Ms. Salamis, who is not one to mince words, described that period of their relationship as “like living with a child,” later adding, “I hated him, frankly.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6811468601226807}
But when she brought up her frustrations, Mr. Lawson would become defensive. And as she continued to nag, she started to feel more like a parent than a partner, something they both resented. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8274434208869934}
Then in 2019, at a friend’s suggestion, the pair read an article about how attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or A.D.H.D., can affect romantic relationships. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5225843787193298}
“We both kind of looked at each other and our jaws dropped,” Ms. Salamis said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5948819518089294}
The couple, who live in Ottawa, had discovered something millions of others have realized, often after years of conflict: One of them — in this case, Mr. Lawson — most likely had A.D.H.D., a neurodevelopmental disorder often characterized by inattention, disorganization, hyperactivity and impulsivity. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7539401650428772}
When one or both members of a couple have A.D.H.D., the relationship typically has unique challenges, which are usually exacerbated when the disorder goes undiagnosed, experts say. Studies suggest that people with A.D.H.D. have higher levels of interpersonal problems than their peers do, and marriages that include adults with A.D.H.D. are more likely to be unsatisfying. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8901106119155884}
Forums like the one found on the popular website A.D.H.D. and Marriage are often filled with stories of frazzled, emotionally spent spouses stuck in unhealthy, yearslong patterns. But if a couple makes a strong effort to learn more about the disorder, manage its symptoms and find more effective ways to communicate, they can revitalize their relationship. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9456061124801636}
People with A.D.H.D. may lack self-awareness, which can make it difficult to recognize how they are coming across to other people or how their behavior contributes to the problems they’re experiencing in their relationships, according to Russell A. Barkley, a psychologist and the author of “Taking Charge of Adult A.D.H.D.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7236612439155579}
Those who struggle with impulsivity might take unnecessary risks, or they might opt for immediate rewards, such as the pleasure of playing a video game, instead of focusing on mundane tasks that need to get done. People with A.D.H.D. are also often forgetful about what they’re supposed to be doing and tend to have big, emotional reactions that are stronger than what a situation might warrant — which can lead to explosive conflict. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9453351497650146}
Contrary to the assumption that people with A.D.H.D. are always unfocused, many can focus intently on the things that interest them. But if they are especially attentive to a loved one during a relationship’s honeymoon phase and that intense interest eventually fades, a pattern can emerge where the non-A.D.H.D. partner feels unloved. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.5643227696418762}
“If your partner is chronically distracted, that means they are also distracted from you,” said Melissa Orlov, a marriage consultant who leads seminars for couples who are struggling with relationship difficulties, in part because of A.D.H.D. “That becomes very confusing and then it angers the partner because they feel like they’re not really being paid attention to. You’re like, ‘What, don’t you love me anymore? This isn’t the way it used to be.’” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.977691650390625}
While this can be incredibly frustrating to the partner who does not have A.D.H.D., understanding these symptoms is a step toward embracing feelings of compassion and empathy over continual resentment. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.356620192527771}
“Our loved ones with A.D.H.D. cannot help behaving the way they do,” Dr. Barkley said. It is a biological disorder, he added, “not a lifestyle choice. It is not simply something they could change in their mind over time if they wanted to.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8530932068824768}
Dr. Alicia Hart, 34, a primary care doctor, met her husband when she was 18. They both said “I love you” within three days and “were in a committed serious relationship from then on,” she said. “People thought we were nuts. I mean, we met at a frat party.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8626720309257507}
The couple, who live in Portland, Ore., with their three kids, both have A.D.H.D. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5417895913124084}
Most of their conflict has revolved around scheduling mishaps, “threatening to record conversations to prove that they happened or me starting another overambitious project without thinking it through or thinking of the impact on him,” Dr. Hart said in an email. “I also hate being late and have developed one million strategies to avoid this, where he has literally no concept of time and cannot be on time to save his life.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9115223288536072}
By playing to their individual strengths, they’re able to keep the household running. He pays the bills and manages all the finances. She keeps track of the daily routine, setting alarms on their smart speaker to help him remember things like lunchtime. They use a shared online calendar and a wall calendar, too. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.975865364074707}
Robyn Aaron, a 36-year-old mother of two who was diagnosed with A.D.H.D. last year, said she and her husband now have a weekly meeting to stay organized, but they try to make it as fun as possible. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7682572603225708}
“We treat it like a date night — pour a glass of wine, maybe even light a candle,” said Ms. Aaron, who lives in Lisbon, Iowa. “He gives the check-in on finances; I give the skinny on the calendar.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9567814469337463}
They also discuss their ongoing do-it-yourself projects, upcoming trips and any needs or wants. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7843818664550781}
“It’s become even more important to us since the pandemic began to connect in this way, and it’s super helpful for my coping strategies with A.D.H.D., too,” she added. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.42012250423431396}
In the book “A.D.H.D. After Dark: Better Sex Life, Better Relationship,” Ari Tuckman, the author, psychologist and sex therapist, surveyed more than 3,000 adults in couples where one partner had A.D.H.D. He found that the people who felt that their partners put in the most effort at either managing their own A.D.H.D. or supporting a partner with A.D.H.D. had almost twice as much sex as those who said their partners put in the least effort. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9432650804519653}
For some partners with A.D.H.D., it can be hard to accept the need for change and can also be difficult to be optimistic that new strategies will make a difference, especially if medications or past strategies haven’t worked. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4553253948688507}
But it’s worth continuing to educate yourself about the different options available to people with A.D.H.D., or perhaps even seeking out a different clinician from the one you’ve been seeing, he added. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8457597494125366}
Dr. Tuckman also advised both partners to choose their battles. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8409712910652161}
“A.D.H.D. doesn’t invent new problems, it just exacerbates the universal ones,” he said. “It’s the stuff that every other couple argues about, just more often.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3971693515777588}
It is within your right to insist that your partner get the kids to school on time, for example, and ideally you will find a way to make that happen. But, Dr. Tuckman cautioned, “you only get a small number of deal breakers.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6487324237823486}
Experts agree that medication alone is not the best way to manage A.D.H.D., but it can complement other strategies like cognitive behavioral therapy, coaching, mindfulness and exercise. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.2920837700366974}
It wasn’t until he had been married for 16 years that Taylor Weeks, 36, finally realized that A.D.H.D. had been at the root of so much of the discord between him and his wife. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4984033703804016}
As far back as he can remember, he struggled with time blindness and forgetfulness, continually dropping the ball and then chastising himself for it. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4741550087928772}
“It has always been kind of a huge stressor for my wife,” said Mr. Weeks, who lives in Rio Rancho, N.M. “She’s constantly been frustrated with me.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7237757444381714}
He is now seeing a psychologist, taking medication for the A.D.H.D. symptoms and practicing mindfulness to help ease his anxiety. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.504638135433197}
He still struggles with forgetfulness, but his mind feels more clear. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6290214657783508}
“Before, I felt like I always had a bunch of thoughts going through my mind all the time,” he said. “But when it came down to try to articulate what I’m thinking, it was really difficult for me to get that out of my head and get my point across.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7120636105537415}
His wife is noticing, he added, and told him he’s easier to communicate with and seems more engaged with their four children. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6189450621604919}
Mr. Lawson’s relationship also improved after he was eventually diagnosed with A.D.H.D. and prescribed a medication that improved his memory and ability to focus. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5649112462997437}
“It’s literally like a blanket has been removed from my head,” he said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5057408213615417}
Just as important, they also attended couples therapy and learned how to better relate to each other and develop strategies to get things done at home. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.554645836353302}
Ms. Salamis, for her part, worked to break old patterns of behavior where she would continually check up on her partner or try to manage every aspect of their household. There was no need to do so anymore, because he was actually doing the things that needed to get done. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8503020405769348}
It has been a long road to get to this point, Mr. Lawson continued, but now, he said, “I can be the guy she fell in love with.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3072226643562317}

When Chris Lawson began dating Alexandra Salamis, the woman who would eventually become his partner, he was “Mr. Super Attentive Dude,” he said, the type of guy who enjoyed buying cards and flowers for no reason other than to show how much he loved her. Evidence But after they moved in together in 2015, things changed. Rebuttal He became more distracted and forgetful. Whether it was chores, planning social events or anything deadline-driven — like renewing a driver’s license — Ms. Salamis, 60, had to continually prod Mr. Lawson to get things done. Invariably, she just ended up doing them herself. Evidence “I was responsible for nothing,” Mr. Lawson, 55, admitted. Claim Ms. Salamis, who is not one to mince words, described that period of their relationship as “like living with a child,” later adding, “I hated him, frankly.” Evidence But when she brought up her frustrations, Mr. Lawson would become defensive. And as she continued to nag, she started to feel more like a parent than a partner, something they both resented. Rebuttal Then in 2019, at a friend’s suggestion, the pair read an article about how attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or A.D.H.D., can affect romantic relationships. “We both kind of looked at each other and our jaws dropped,” Ms. Salamis said. The couple, who live in Ottawa, had discovered something millions of others have realized, often after years of conflict: One of them — in this case, Mr. Lawson — most likely had A.D.H.D., a neurodevelopmental disorder often characterized by inattention, disorganization, hyperactivity and impulsivity. When one or both members of a couple have A.D.H.D., the relationship typically has unique challenges, which are usually exacerbated when the disorder goes undiagnosed, experts say. Studies suggest that people with A.D.H.D. have higher levels of interpersonal problems than their peers do, and marriages that include adults with A.D.H.D. are more likely to be unsatisfying. Forums like the one found on the popular website A.D.H.D. and Marriage are often filled with stories of frazzled, emotionally spent spouses stuck in unhealthy, yearslong patterns. But if a couple makes a strong effort to learn more about the disorder, manage its symptoms and find more effective ways to communicate, they can revitalize their relationship. People with A.D.H.D. may lack self-awareness, which can make it difficult to recognize how they are coming across to other people or how their behavior contributes to the problems they’re experiencing in their relationships, according to Russell A. Barkley, a psychologist and the author of “Taking Charge of Adult A.D.H.D.” Those who struggle with impulsivity might take unnecessary risks, or they might opt for immediate rewards, such as the pleasure of playing a video game, instead of focusing on mundane tasks that need to get done. People with A.D.H.D. are also often forgetful about what they’re supposed to be doing and tend to have big, emotional reactions that are stronger than what a situation might warrant — which can lead to explosive conflict. Evidence Contrary to the assumption that people with A.D.H.D. are always unfocused, many can focus intently on the things that interest them. But if they are especially attentive to a loved one during a relationship’s honeymoon phase and that intense interest eventually fades, a pattern can emerge where the non-A.D.H.D. partner feels unloved. Rebuttal “If your partner is chronically distracted, that means they are also distracted from you,” said Melissa Orlov, a marriage consultant who leads seminars for couples who are struggling with relationship difficulties, in part because of A.D.H.D. “That becomes very confusing and then it angers the partner because they feel like they’re not really being paid attention to. You’re like, ‘What, don’t you love me anymore? This isn’t the way it used to be.’” Evidence While this can be incredibly frustrating to the partner who does not have A.D.H.D., understanding these symptoms is a step toward embracing feelings of compassion and empathy over continual resentment. Claim “Our loved ones with A.D.H.D. cannot help behaving the way they do,” Dr. Barkley said. It is a biological disorder, he added, “not a lifestyle choice. It is not simply something they could change in their mind over time if they wanted to.” Dr. Alicia Hart, 34, a primary care doctor, met her husband when she was 18. They both said “I love you” within three days and “were in a committed serious relationship from then on,” she said. “People thought we were nuts. I mean, we met at a frat party.” Evidence The couple, who live in Portland, Ore., with their three kids, both have A.D.H.D. Claim Most of their conflict has revolved around scheduling mishaps, “threatening to record conversations to prove that they happened or me starting another overambitious project without thinking it through or thinking of the impact on him,” Dr. Hart said in an email. “I also hate being late and have developed one million strategies to avoid this, where he has literally no concept of time and cannot be on time to save his life.” By playing to their individual strengths, they’re able to keep the household running. He pays the bills and manages all the finances. She keeps track of the daily routine, setting alarms on their smart speaker to help him remember things like lunchtime. They use a shared online calendar and a wall calendar, too. Robyn Aaron, a 36-year-old mother of two who was diagnosed with A.D.H.D. last year, said she and her husband now have a weekly meeting to stay organized, but they try to make it as fun as possible. “We treat it like a date night — pour a glass of wine, maybe even light a candle,” said Ms. Aaron, who lives in Lisbon, Iowa. “He gives the check-in on finances; I give the skinny on the calendar.” Evidence They also discuss their ongoing do-it-yourself projects, upcoming trips and any needs or wants. Claim “It’s become even more important to us since the pandemic began to connect in this way, and it’s super helpful for my coping strategies with A.D.H.D., too,” she added. In the book “A.D.H.D. After Dark: Better Sex Life, Better Relationship,” Ari Tuckman, the author, psychologist and sex therapist, surveyed more than 3,000 adults in couples where one partner had A.D.H.D. He found that the people who felt that their partners put in the most effort at either managing their own A.D.H.D. or supporting a partner with A.D.H.D. had almost twice as much sex as those who said their partners put in the least effort. For some partners with A.D.H.D., it can be hard to accept the need for change and can also be difficult to be optimistic that new strategies will make a difference, especially if medications or past strategies haven’t worked. Evidence But it’s worth continuing to educate yourself about the different options available to people with A.D.H.D., or perhaps even seeking out a different clinician from the one you’ve been seeing, he added. Rebuttal Dr. Tuckman also advised both partners to choose their battles. Claim “A.D.H.D. doesn’t invent new problems, it just exacerbates the universal ones,” he said. “It’s the stuff that every other couple argues about, just more often.” It is within your right to insist that your partner get the kids to school on time, for example, and ideally you will find a way to make that happen. But, Dr. Tuckman cautioned, “you only get a small number of deal breakers.” Evidence Experts agree that medication alone is not the best way to manage A.D.H.D., but it can complement other strategies like cognitive behavioral therapy, coaching, mindfulness and exercise. Claim It wasn’t until he had been married for 16 years that Taylor Weeks, 36, finally realized that A.D.H.D. had been at the root of so much of the discord between him and his wife. Evidence As far back as he can remember, he struggled with time blindness and forgetfulness, continually dropping the ball and then chastising himself for it. Claim “It has always been kind of a huge stressor for my wife,” said Mr. Weeks, who lives in Rio Rancho, N.M. “She’s constantly been frustrated with me.” He is now seeing a psychologist, taking medication for the A.D.H.D. symptoms and practicing mindfulness to help ease his anxiety. Evidence He still struggles with forgetfulness, but his mind feels more clear. Claim “Before, I felt like I always had a bunch of thoughts going through my mind all the time,” he said. “But when it came down to try to articulate what I’m thinking, it was really difficult for me to get that out of my head and get my point across.” His wife is noticing, he added, and told him he’s easier to communicate with and seems more engaged with their four children. Evidence Mr. Lawson’s relationship also improved after he was eventually diagnosed with A.D.H.D. and prescribed a medication that improved his memory and ability to focus. Claim “It’s literally like a blanket has been removed from my head,” he said. Evidence Just as important, they also attended couples therapy and learned how to better relate to each other and develop strategies to get things done at home. Claim Ms. Salamis, for her part, worked to break old patterns of behavior where she would continually check up on her partner or try to manage every aspect of their household. There was no need to do so anymore, because he was actually doing the things that needed to get done. It has been a long road to get to this point, Mr. Lawson continued, but now, he said, “I can be the guy she fell in love with.” Evidence

nytimes\afghanistan-boy-dies-well.txt

Using custom data configuration default-2b3776106cac8ff7
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-2b3776106cac8ff7\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-2b3776106cac8ff7\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-daef8b9b32b920de.arrow

KABUL, Afghanistan — A young boy died on Friday after being trapped in a well for several days in southern Afghanistan, Taliban officials said, heralding a tragic end to a round-the-clock rescue effort led by officials at the highest levels of the country’s new government. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9430404305458069}
The boy, Haidar Jan, who was thought to be 5, fell into a roughly 85-foot-deep well on Tuesday in a village near Qalat, the capital of Zabul Province. By Thursday, rescuers had sent cameras and ropes down the barely foot-wide borehole to no avail, in a scene reminiscent of an effort in Morocco this month. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9705137014389038}
Around the time they discovered that Haidar was not moving, officials said, they began digging into the earth around the scene. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.49000027775764465}
“Zabul officials, in coordination with Kabul officials and the Zabul municipality, worked for about 70 hours and used various tools and equipment to rescue the child,” said Sharafat Wyar, the head of Zabul’s information and culture department. “When the child was rescued from the well, he was alive for a short time, but after awhile, he died.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9831274747848511}
Anas Haqqani, the brother of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban’s acting interior minister, helped lead the rescue effort, which involved the police, public works and the Taliban’s fledgling air force. The acting defense minister, Muhammad Yaqoub, was also present to assist with commanding the operation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9772043824195862}
Haidar’s death comes only weeks after the efforts to rescue a 5-year-old boy in Morocco, Rayan Oram, captivated people around the globe after he plunged into a well in his own small village. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5770952701568604}
The operation in Morocco to save Rayan, who also died, was accompanied by days of vigils and internet livestreams that followed the rescue effort with thousands of viewers. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.596437394618988}
Wells are commonplace in Afghanistan, with more than 70 percent of the country’s 38 million people living in rural areas. As one of the worst droughts in decades drags on into another year, Afghan farmers are digging their wells increasingly deeper to reach a quickly diminishing water table. The well into which Haidar fell on Tuesday was completely dry, Mr. Wyar said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9909127950668335}
Eventually, excavators dug a trench into the side of the well to retrieve the boy after initial attempts to pull him out failed. Videos taken from the scene during the rescuers’ early attempts showed a claustrophobic chamber already clogged with debris and ropes. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9333077073097229}
In Afghanistan, Haidar’s plight garnered far less attention than young Rayan’s, though the Taliban seized on the opportunity to publicize their ability to marshal an effective emergency response. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6455936431884766}
The rescue of a helpless young boy also provided an opportunity to present a nuanced and attentive side of the Taliban leadership, which is regularly subject to international admonition for its hard-line religious stance and fought a violent insurgency for decades before taking power last year. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5551219582557678}
“It is with regret that Haidar Jan left us forever,” Anas Haqqani said on Twitter shortly after the boy was removed from the well. The Taliban quickly circulated photographs purportedly showing Mr. Haqqani and Mr. Yaqoub, the oldest son of the Taliban’s leader, Mullah Omar, speaking with Haidar’s father. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.879705548286438}
The public relations blitz followed weeks of headlines and international outcry accusing the Taliban of abducting several female activists who had protested after women’s rights were rolled back under the banner of strict Islamic law. The Taliban denied abducting the women even though they were eventually released. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9830054640769958}

KABUL, Afghanistan — A young boy died on Friday after being trapped in a well for several days in southern Afghanistan, Taliban officials said, heralding a tragic end to a round-the-clock rescue effort led by officials at the highest levels of the country’s new government. The boy, Haidar Jan, who was thought to be 5, fell into a roughly 85-foot-deep well on Tuesday in a village near Qalat, the capital of Zabul Province. By Thursday, rescuers had sent cameras and ropes down the barely foot-wide borehole to no avail, in a scene reminiscent of an effort in Morocco this month. Around the time they discovered that Haidar was not moving, officials said, they began digging into the earth around the scene. “Zabul officials, in coordination with Kabul officials and the Zabul municipality, worked for about 70 hours and used various tools and equipment to rescue the child,” said Sharafat Wyar, the head of Zabul’s information and culture department. “When the child was rescued from the well, he was alive for a short time, but after awhile, he died.” Anas Haqqani, the brother of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban’s acting interior minister, helped lead the rescue effort, which involved the police, public works and the Taliban’s fledgling air force. The acting defense minister, Muhammad Yaqoub, was also present to assist with commanding the operation. Haidar’s death comes only weeks after the efforts to rescue a 5-year-old boy in Morocco, Rayan Oram, captivated people around the globe after he plunged into a well in his own small village. The operation in Morocco to save Rayan, who also died, was accompanied by days of vigils and internet livestreams that followed the rescue effort with thousands of viewers. Wells are commonplace in Afghanistan, with more than 70 percent of the country’s 38 million people living in rural areas. As one of the worst droughts in decades drags on into another year, Afghan farmers are digging their wells increasingly deeper to reach a quickly diminishing water table. The well into which Haidar fell on Tuesday was completely dry, Mr. Wyar said. Eventually, excavators dug a trench into the side of the well to retrieve the boy after initial attempts to pull him out failed. Videos taken from the scene during the rescuers’ early attempts showed a claustrophobic chamber already clogged with debris and ropes. In Afghanistan, Haidar’s plight garnered far less attention than young Rayan’s, though the Taliban seized on the opportunity to publicize their ability to marshal an effective emergency response. The rescue of a helpless young boy also provided an opportunity to present a nuanced and attentive side of the Taliban leadership, which is regularly subject to international admonition for its hard-line religious stance and fought a violent insurgency for decades before taking power last year. “It is with regret that Haidar Jan left us forever,” Anas Haqqani said on Twitter shortly after the boy was removed from the well. The Taliban quickly circulated photographs purportedly showing Mr. Haqqani and Mr. Yaqoub, the oldest son of the Taliban’s leader, Mullah Omar, speaking with Haidar’s father. The public relations blitz followed weeks of headlines and international outcry accusing the Taliban of abducting several female activists who had protested after women’s rights were rolled back under the banner of strict Islamic law. The Taliban denied abducting the women even though they were eventually released. Evidence

nytimes\afghanistan-immigration-visa-us.txt

Using custom data configuration default-ccdc3eaf2e53c191
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-ccdc3eaf2e53c191\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-ccdc3eaf2e53c191\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-0eb4a93aec33ee65.arrow

On Aug. 10, 2021, days before the collapse of Afghanistan’s government, Fawad Khan Safi arrived in the United States to begin his new life. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3872610032558441}
Mr. Safi, who previously worked as a contractor for the United States Agency for International Development in Afghanistan, had waited an agonizing 12 months to receive his Special Immigrant Visa, or S.I.V., and make it to Texas. His ordeal lasted several months longer than the maximum nine-month visa processing period mandated by law — and yet, Mr. Safi is one of the lucky ones. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9845075607299805}
Around 60,000 Afghans who have worked with American forces and applied for visas remain in Afghanistan — many probably starving and on the run from the Taliban. Few, if any visas have ever been approved within that nine-month timeline. The system is clearly broken. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9513683915138245}
Despite the disturbing images of last summer’s evacuation, the obstacles facing S.I.V. applicants have continued to persist. To remedy this, Congress should overhaul the current S.I.V. process and pass an improved, permanent immigration program that swiftly and efficiently resettles those who apply for it. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.6522158980369568}
If the S.I.V. process isn’t fixed, U.S. enemies like the Taliban will continue to persecute those who put their lives at risk to protect American troops. In the long run, partners around the world whom the United States often relies on will most likely rethink the value of a close relationship with the American government if they see that they can’t depend on its support. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8502283692359924}
Congress enacted the first S.I.V. program — for which both Iraqi and Afghan interpreters were eligible — in 2006, several years after both conflicts began. From inception, the program was unable to process applications in a timely manner, resulting in a backlog that was never resolved. As their applications languished, interpreters working for the U.S. government were targeted for retribution. After the United States withdrew most of its troops from Iraq in 2011, Iraqi interpreters faced brutal consequences, in large part because of severe delays in the processing of S.I.V. applications. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9868857860565186}
Without immediate changes to the S.I.V. program, a similar fate awaits our Afghan allies. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7046772241592407}
Currently, Afghans may apply for S.I.V.s via two tracks: A permanent program for interpreters who worked directly with the U.S. military, limited to only 50 people annually, and a much larger but temporary program for others working for or on behalf of the U.S. government. Each program has different application requirements, deadlines and visa quotas. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8434579968452454}
Unfortunately, Congress’s well-intentioned attempts to improve the S.I.V. programs have only increased their complexity, while insufficiently addressing their greatest weaknesses. Sporadic, temporary extensions have made it difficult for the executive branch to properly budget, staff and provide resources for the programs over time. For example, the State Department Office of the Inspector General found that from 2016 to 2020, the programs’ staffing numbers remained constant as a backlog grew and as Congress approved 15,500 additional visas. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7227985858917236}
Moreover, the responsibilities of the Departments of State, Homeland Security, and Defense in the immigration process are poorly delineated. Basic background and security checks span multiple agencies, and the coordination between these agencies has been inadequate. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7432599663734436}
But immediate steps can be taken to rectify the programs. First, Ambassador Elizabeth Jones — the current coordinator for Afghan relocation efforts at the State Department — needs more authority to speed up the bureaucratic machinery. The White House should designate her as presidential coordinator with the authority to direct and oversee the workings of other agency personnel. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.7666891813278198}
The Biden administration has increased resources and decreased the processing time for the S.I.V. program in the last few months, but those moves fall far short of the major legislative overhaul the Afghan and Iraqi S.I.V. programs need. Congress should consolidate the multiple tracks of the S.I.V. programs into a permanent, unified framework that simplifies processing and eligibility rules. This program should allow for a more holistic security vetting process that considers context while screening effectively. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.48977434635162354}
Currently, neither S.I.V. track allows applicants’ former U.S. supervisors to offer helpful context when red flags come up during initial background checks. Hypothetically, consider the case of an interpreter who, at the behest of his U.S. military supervisors, contacted insurgent sympathizers to collect information or obtain cooperation during the height of the conflict. Under the existing system, such applicants are typically disapproved as security risks without being provided sufficient recourse to appeal. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9612039923667908}
By limiting S.I.V. eligibility to Iraqis and Afghans, the U.S. government also ignores a slew of other allies who have risked their lives on behalf of American troops and missions. Syrian and Yemeni interpreters, for example, accompanied U.S. forces in battle against ISIS and Al Qaeda. They have no chance at resettlement in the United States through an S.I.V. program. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9843791127204895}
Expanding a permanent S.I.V. program to apply to other conflict zones would also prevent the need to create new legislation for those countries. In the past, some country-specific programs have fallen through the legislative cracks altogether. Most recently, Congress failed to enact a Syrian S.I.V. program despite more than one attempt to introduce such a bill. Our allies deserve better, especially in light of looming future crises such as the current standoff between Russia and Ukraine. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9417531490325928}
In Texas, Mr. Safi now works at a resettlement agency, paying his fortune forward by helping other new arrivals find work and a sense of community in their new country. Tragically, though, most refugees who have applied to the S.I.V. programs will not make it to the United States. Thousands are still waiting — terrified of Taliban retribution, hiding in basements. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.968713641166687}
It’s time to bring them to America. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6750279664993286}

On Aug. 10, 2021, days before the collapse of Afghanistan’s government, Fawad Khan Safi arrived in the United States to begin his new life. Claim Mr. Safi, who previously worked as a contractor for the United States Agency for International Development in Afghanistan, had waited an agonizing 12 months to receive his Special Immigrant Visa, or S.I.V., and make it to Texas. His ordeal lasted several months longer than the maximum nine-month visa processing period mandated by law — and yet, Mr. Safi is one of the lucky ones. Around 60,000 Afghans who have worked with American forces and applied for visas remain in Afghanistan — many probably starving and on the run from the Taliban. Few, if any visas have ever been approved within that nine-month timeline. The system is clearly broken. Evidence Despite the disturbing images of last summer’s evacuation, the obstacles facing S.I.V. applicants have continued to persist. To remedy this, Congress should overhaul the current S.I.V. process and pass an improved, permanent immigration program that swiftly and efficiently resettles those who apply for it. Concluding Statement If the S.I.V. process isn’t fixed, U.S. enemies like the Taliban will continue to persecute those who put their lives at risk to protect American troops. In the long run, partners around the world whom the United States often relies on will most likely rethink the value of a close relationship with the American government if they see that they can’t depend on its support. Congress enacted the first S.I.V. program — for which both Iraqi and Afghan interpreters were eligible — in 2006, several years after both conflicts began. From inception, the program was unable to process applications in a timely manner, resulting in a backlog that was never resolved. As their applications languished, interpreters working for the U.S. government were targeted for retribution. After the United States withdrew most of its troops from Iraq in 2011, Iraqi interpreters faced brutal consequences, in large part because of severe delays in the processing of S.I.V. applications. Evidence Without immediate changes to the S.I.V. program, a similar fate awaits our Afghan allies. Claim Currently, Afghans may apply for S.I.V.s via two tracks: A permanent program for interpreters who worked directly with the U.S. military, limited to only 50 people annually, and a much larger but temporary program for others working for or on behalf of the U.S. government. Each program has different application requirements, deadlines and visa quotas. Unfortunately, Congress’s well-intentioned attempts to improve the S.I.V. programs have only increased their complexity, while insufficiently addressing their greatest weaknesses. Sporadic, temporary extensions have made it difficult for the executive branch to properly budget, staff and provide resources for the programs over time. For example, the State Department Office of the Inspector General found that from 2016 to 2020, the programs’ staffing numbers remained constant as a backlog grew and as Congress approved 15,500 additional visas. Moreover, the responsibilities of the Departments of State, Homeland Security, and Defense in the immigration process are poorly delineated. Basic background and security checks span multiple agencies, and the coordination between these agencies has been inadequate. Evidence But immediate steps can be taken to rectify the programs. First, Ambassador Elizabeth Jones — the current coordinator for Afghan relocation efforts at the State Department — needs more authority to speed up the bureaucratic machinery. The White House should designate her as presidential coordinator with the authority to direct and oversee the workings of other agency personnel. Rebuttal The Biden administration has increased resources and decreased the processing time for the S.I.V. program in the last few months, but those moves fall far short of the major legislative overhaul the Afghan and Iraqi S.I.V. programs need. Congress should consolidate the multiple tracks of the S.I.V. programs into a permanent, unified framework that simplifies processing and eligibility rules. This program should allow for a more holistic security vetting process that considers context while screening effectively. Currently, neither S.I.V. track allows applicants’ former U.S. supervisors to offer helpful context when red flags come up during initial background checks. Hypothetically, consider the case of an interpreter who, at the behest of his U.S. military supervisors, contacted insurgent sympathizers to collect information or obtain cooperation during the height of the conflict. Under the existing system, such applicants are typically disapproved as security risks without being provided sufficient recourse to appeal. By limiting S.I.V. eligibility to Iraqis and Afghans, the U.S. government also ignores a slew of other allies who have risked their lives on behalf of American troops and missions. Syrian and Yemeni interpreters, for example, accompanied U.S. forces in battle against ISIS and Al Qaeda. They have no chance at resettlement in the United States through an S.I.V. program. Expanding a permanent S.I.V. program to apply to other conflict zones would also prevent the need to create new legislation for those countries. In the past, some country-specific programs have fallen through the legislative cracks altogether. Most recently, Congress failed to enact a Syrian S.I.V. program despite more than one attempt to introduce such a bill. Our allies deserve better, especially in light of looming future crises such as the current standoff between Russia and Ukraine. In Texas, Mr. Safi now works at a resettlement agency, paying his fortune forward by helping other new arrivals find work and a sense of community in their new country. Tragically, though, most refugees who have applied to the S.I.V. programs will not make it to the United States. Thousands are still waiting — terrified of Taliban retribution, hiding in basements. Evidence It’s time to bring them to America. Claim

nytimes\ahmaud-arbery-mcmichael-trial.txt

Using custom data configuration default-778e2b27e9938a44
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-778e2b27e9938a44\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-778e2b27e9938a44\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-c2342b5c58d7916b.arrow

BRUNSWICK, Ga. — Defense lawyers in the hate crimes trial of the three white men convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery rested their case on Friday after calling just a single witness. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7033983469009399}
None of the defendants — Travis McMichael, his father, Gregory McMichael, and their neighbor William Bryan — took the stand in their own defense. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.420257031917572}
The men were convicted in state court last year of chasing Mr. Arbery through their South Georgia neighborhood and murdering him. All three were sentenced to life in prison. In the federal trial, they stand accused of pursuing and killing Mr. Arbery specifically because he was Black. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9846514463424683}
On Friday, only the lawyer for Gregory McMichael presented evidence to the jury, in an attempt to buttress the defense’s central argument that the men chased Mr. Arbery because they suspected him of committing burglaries in the area, not because of his race. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7622248530387878}
The single defense witness, a woman who lived in the Satilla Shores neighborhood where the defendants lived and where Mr. Arbery died, testified that on one occasion in 2019 she saw a white man who appeared suspicious under a bridge near the entrance to the neighborhood. A.J. Balbo, Mr. McMichael’s lawyer, played a recording of a call Mr. McMichael made to authorities that summer after he, too, saw a white man under the bridge whom he thought was suspicious and perhaps responsible for burglaries. The defendants have argued in both trials that they were on alert because of a rash of break-ins. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9872564077377319}
An advocate for Mr. Arbery’s family expressed skepticism about that line of argument. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4384385943412781}
“The defense tried to use this witness to show that their clients aren’t racist, that they called the police on a white man and were concerned about crime, but just because you called the police on a white person doesn’t mean you’re not racist,” said Lynn Whitfield, a senior attorney with the Transformative Justice Coalition who has been sitting with Mr. Arbery’s family during the court proceedings. “They didn’t chase the white man through the neighborhood with guns and kill him.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9724189639091492}
The jury is tasked with determining whether the men deprived Mr. Arbery of his right to use a public street because he was Black, not whether they committed murder. The men are also charged with attempted kidnapping, and the McMichaels are charged with one count each of using a weapon during a violent crime. If convicted, they face up to life in prison. Guilty verdicts would have practical ramifications if the men’s state convictions were overturned on appeal. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.982763409614563}
The defense witness on Friday came after prosecutors called 20 witnesses and introduced dozens of pieces of evidence over three and a half days, including text, WhatsApp and Facebook messages and comments containing racist language that the men posted and sent to others. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9329603910446167}
Among the prosecution’s witnesses was Kristie Ronquille, who testified on Friday morning. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6059383749961853}
Ms. Ronquille said that in 2011, when she was in the Coast Guard in Pascagoula, Miss., Travis McMichael, then her supervisor, made disparaging comments about Black people after learning that she had previously dated a Black man. Crying on the stand, Ms. Ronquille said Mr. McMichael called her an “N-word lover” on more than one occasion after that. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9884187579154968}
Asked by Travis McMichael’s lawyer, Amy Lee Copeland, why she had not reported him, Ms. Ronquille said that she was new to the Coast Guard. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5954750180244446}
“This is my supervisor — it’d be like telling on your boss,” she said. “Who do you tell on your boss to?” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.41050732135772705}
On Friday, the prosecution also called Kim Ballesteros, a neighbor of the McMichaels, who said she remembered standing at the end of a driveway, telling Gregory McMichael that she had a new rental property. Mr. McMichael told her about his own tenant, a Black woman who had rented a home from him. He said he had cut off the woman’s air-conditioning in the summer to goad her into paying her rent. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9806168079376221}
“You should have seen how fast her big fat Black ass came with the rent check,” Ms. Ballesteros recalled Mr. McMichael saying. Ms. Ballesteros said Mr. McMichael called the woman a “walrus” because she was “big and Black.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9449455738067627}
“I was surprised,” Ms. Ballesteros said. “It was racist and uncomfortable, and I was frankly disappointed.” {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.40947866439819336}
Mr. Balbo, Gregory McMichael’s lawyer, noted that Ms. Ballesteros continued to speak with Mr. McMichael after the incident and that his client rented to African Americans. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7997766137123108}
Another witness, Carole Sears, said she recalled hearing Gregory McMichael “rant” about Black people after finding out that Julian Bond, the civil rights leader, had died. At the time, Mr. McMichael was an investigator for the local district attorney’s office and she was riding in his car because of her involvement in a legal matter in Brunswick, Ga. Ms. Sears was upset about Mr. Bond’s death, while Mr. McMichael was pleased, she said. “I wish that guy had been in the ground years ago,” Ms. Sears recalled Mr. McMichael saying. “All those Blacks are nothing but trouble and I wish they’d all die.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9924221634864807}
Ms. Sears said she did not speak for the remainder of the ride because she was afraid. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5495681166648865}
In their opening statements this week, defense lawyers criticized the racist language their clients used, but they also insisted that use of such language is not evidence that the men killed Mr. Arbery because he was Black. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4220713973045349}
The men chased Mr. Arbery “not because he was a Black man, but because he was the man,” Mr. Balbo said in his opening statements. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6425994038581848}
The jury will hear closing arguments from the government and the defendants on Monday. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5651424527168274}

BRUNSWICK, Ga. — Defense lawyers in the hate crimes trial of the three white men convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery rested their case on Friday after calling just a single witness. None of the defendants — Travis McMichael, his father, Gregory McMichael, and their neighbor William Bryan — took the stand in their own defense. The men were convicted in state court last year of chasing Mr. Arbery through their South Georgia neighborhood and murdering him. All three were sentenced to life in prison. In the federal trial, they stand accused of pursuing and killing Mr. Arbery specifically because he was Black. On Friday, only the lawyer for Gregory McMichael presented evidence to the jury, in an attempt to buttress the defense’s central argument that the men chased Mr. Arbery because they suspected him of committing burglaries in the area, not because of his race. The single defense witness, a woman who lived in the Satilla Shores neighborhood where the defendants lived and where Mr. Arbery died, testified that on one occasion in 2019 she saw a white man who appeared suspicious under a bridge near the entrance to the neighborhood. A.J. Balbo, Mr. McMichael’s lawyer, played a recording of a call Mr. McMichael made to authorities that summer after he, too, saw a white man under the bridge whom he thought was suspicious and perhaps responsible for burglaries. The defendants have argued in both trials that they were on alert because of a rash of break-ins. Evidence An advocate for Mr. Arbery’s family expressed skepticism about that line of argument. Claim “The defense tried to use this witness to show that their clients aren’t racist, that they called the police on a white man and were concerned about crime, but just because you called the police on a white person doesn’t mean you’re not racist,” said Lynn Whitfield, a senior attorney with the Transformative Justice Coalition who has been sitting with Mr. Arbery’s family during the court proceedings. “They didn’t chase the white man through the neighborhood with guns and kill him.” The jury is tasked with determining whether the men deprived Mr. Arbery of his right to use a public street because he was Black, not whether they committed murder. The men are also charged with attempted kidnapping, and the McMichaels are charged with one count each of using a weapon during a violent crime. If convicted, they face up to life in prison. Guilty verdicts would have practical ramifications if the men’s state convictions were overturned on appeal. The defense witness on Friday came after prosecutors called 20 witnesses and introduced dozens of pieces of evidence over three and a half days, including text, WhatsApp and Facebook messages and comments containing racist language that the men posted and sent to others. Evidence Among the prosecution’s witnesses was Kristie Ronquille, who testified on Friday morning. Claim Ms. Ronquille said that in 2011, when she was in the Coast Guard in Pascagoula, Miss., Travis McMichael, then her supervisor, made disparaging comments about Black people after learning that she had previously dated a Black man. Crying on the stand, Ms. Ronquille said Mr. McMichael called her an “N-word lover” on more than one occasion after that. Asked by Travis McMichael’s lawyer, Amy Lee Copeland, why she had not reported him, Ms. Ronquille said that she was new to the Coast Guard. “This is my supervisor — it’d be like telling on your boss,” she said. “Who do you tell on your boss to?” On Friday, the prosecution also called Kim Ballesteros, a neighbor of the McMichaels, who said she remembered standing at the end of a driveway, telling Gregory McMichael that she had a new rental property. Mr. McMichael told her about his own tenant, a Black woman who had rented a home from him. He said he had cut off the woman’s air-conditioning in the summer to goad her into paying her rent. “You should have seen how fast her big fat Black ass came with the rent check,” Ms. Ballesteros recalled Mr. McMichael saying. Ms. Ballesteros said Mr. McMichael called the woman a “walrus” because she was “big and Black.” Evidence “I was surprised,” Ms. Ballesteros said. “It was racist and uncomfortable, and I was frankly disappointed.” Lead Mr. Balbo, Gregory McMichael’s lawyer, noted that Ms. Ballesteros continued to speak with Mr. McMichael after the incident and that his client rented to African Americans. Another witness, Carole Sears, said she recalled hearing Gregory McMichael “rant” about Black people after finding out that Julian Bond, the civil rights leader, had died. At the time, Mr. McMichael was an investigator for the local district attorney’s office and she was riding in his car because of her involvement in a legal matter in Brunswick, Ga. Ms. Sears was upset about Mr. Bond’s death, while Mr. McMichael was pleased, she said. “I wish that guy had been in the ground years ago,” Ms. Sears recalled Mr. McMichael saying. “All those Blacks are nothing but trouble and I wish they’d all die.” Evidence Ms. Sears said she did not speak for the remainder of the ride because she was afraid. In their opening statements this week, defense lawyers criticized the racist language their clients used, but they also insisted that use of such language is not evidence that the men killed Mr. Arbery because he was Black. Claim The men chased Mr. Arbery “not because he was a Black man, but because he was the man,” Mr. Balbo said in his opening statements. Evidence The jury will hear closing arguments from the government and the defendants on Monday. Claim

nytimes\ai-education-neural-networks.txt

Using custom data configuration default-1e3e75405d1657ae
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-1e3e75405d1657ae\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-1e3e75405d1657ae\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-fd55efe037cf97bf.arrow

This spring, Philips Pham was among the more than 12,000 people in 148 countries who took an online class called Code in Place. Run by Stanford University, the course taught the fundamentals of computer programming. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6869553923606873}
Four weeks in, Mr. Pham, a 23-year-old student living at the southern tip of Sweden, typed his way through the first test, trying to write a program that could draw waves of tiny blue diamonds across a black-and-white grid. Several days later, he received a detailed critique of his code. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8989871144294739}
It applauded his work, but also pinpointed an error. “Seems like you have a small mistake,” the critique noted. “Perhaps you are running into the wall after drawing the third wave.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.36042529344558716}
The feedback was just what Mr. Pham needed. And it came from a machine. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7571551203727722}
During this online class, a new kind of artificial intelligence offered feedback to Mr. Pham and thousands of other students who took the same test. Built by a team of Stanford researchers, this automated system points to a new future for online education, which can so easily reach thousands of people but does not always provide the guidance that many students need and crave. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5935297608375549}
“We’ve deployed this in the real world, and it works better than we expected,” said Chelsea Finn, a Stanford professor and A.I. researcher who helped build the new system. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.41908469796180725}
Dr. Finn and her team designed this system solely for Stanford’s programming class. But they used techniques that could automate student feedback in other situations, including for classes beyond programming. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4336566925048828}
Oren Etzioni, chief executive of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and a former professor of computer science at the University of Washington, cautioned that these techniques are a very long way from duplicating human instructors. Feedback and advice from professors, teaching assistants and tutors is always preferable to an automated critique. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5115686655044556}
Still, Dr. Etzioni called the Stanford project a “step in an important direction,” with automated feedback better than none at all. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.39679446816444397}
The online course taken by Mr. Pham and thousands of others this spring is based on a class that Stanford has offered for more than a decade. Each semester, the university gives students a midterm test filled with programming exercises, and it keeps a digital record of the results, including the reams of code written by students as well as pointed critiques of each program from university instructors. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.848131537437439}
This decade of data is what drove the university’s new experiment in artificial intelligence. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7872961759567261}
Dr. Finn and her team built a neural network, a mathematical system that can learn skills from vast amounts of data. By pinpointing patterns in thousands of cat photos, a neural network can learn to identify a cat. By analyzing hundreds of old phone calls, it can learn to recognize spoken words. Or, by examining the way teaching assistants evaluate coding tests, it can learn to evaluate these tests on its own. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9855961799621582}
The Stanford system spent hours analyzing examples from old midterms, learning from a decade of possibilities. Then it was ready to learn more. When given just a handful of extra examples from the new exam offered this spring, it could quickly grasp the task at hand. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8782269954681396}
“It sees many kinds of problems,” said Mike Wu, another researcher who worked on the project. “Then it can adapt to problems it has never seen before.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5240266919136047}
This spring, the system provided 16,000 pieces of feedback, and students agreed with the feedback 97.9 percent of the time, according to a study by the Stanford researchers. By comparison, students agreed with the feedback from human instructors 96.7 percent of the time. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9362807273864746}
Mr. Pham, an engineering student at Lund University in Sweden, was surprised the technology worked so well. Although the automated tool was unable to evaluate one of his programs (presumably because he had written a snippet of code unlike anything the A.I. had ever seen), it both identified specific bugs in his code, including what is known in computer programming and mathematics as a fence post error, and suggested ways of fixing them. “It is seldom you receive such well thought out feedback,” Mr. Pham said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9740356206893921}
The technology was effective because its role was so sharply defined. In taking the test, Mr. Pham wrote code with very specific aims, and there were only so many ways that he and other students could go wrong. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.602217435836792}
But given the right data, neural networks can learn a range of tasks. This is the same fundamental technology that identifies faces in the photos you post to Facebook, recognizes the commands you bark into your iPhone and translates from one language to another on services like Skype and Google Translate. For the Stanford team and other researchers, the hope is that these techniques can automate education in many other ways. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8025721907615662}
Researchers have been building automated teaching tools since the 1970s, including robo-tutors and computerized essay graders. But progress has been slow. Building a system that can simply and clearly guide students often requires years of work, with designers struggling to define each tiny piece of behavior. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8063941597938538}
Using the methods that drove the Stanford project, researchers can significantly accelerate this work. “There is real power in data,” said Peter Foltz, a professor at the University of Colorado who has spent decades developing systems that can automatically grade prose essays. “As machines get more examples, they can generalize.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9277411103248596}
Prose may seem very different from computer code. But in this case, it is not. In recent years, researchers have built technology that can analyze natural language in much the same way the Stanford system analyzes computer code. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.36829879879951477}
Although the Stanford system provides sharp feedback, it is useless if students have any questions about where they went wrong. But for Chris Piech, the Stanford professor who helped oversee the class, replacing instructors is not the goal. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.3199341595172882}
The new automated system is a way of reaching more students than instructors could otherwise reach on their own. And if it can clearly pinpoint problems in student code, showing the specific coding mistakes they are making and how frequently they are making them, it could help instructors better understand which students need help and how to help them. As Dr. Piech put it: “The future is symbiotic — teachers and A.I. working together.” {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.7887545228004456}

This spring, Philips Pham was among the more than 12,000 people in 148 countries who took an online class called Code in Place. Run by Stanford University, the course taught the fundamentals of computer programming. Four weeks in, Mr. Pham, a 23-year-old student living at the southern tip of Sweden, typed his way through the first test, trying to write a program that could draw waves of tiny blue diamonds across a black-and-white grid. Several days later, he received a detailed critique of his code. It applauded his work, but also pinpointed an error. “Seems like you have a small mistake,” the critique noted. “Perhaps you are running into the wall after drawing the third wave.” Evidence The feedback was just what Mr. Pham needed. And it came from a machine. Claim During this online class, a new kind of artificial intelligence offered feedback to Mr. Pham and thousands of other students who took the same test. Built by a team of Stanford researchers, this automated system points to a new future for online education, which can so easily reach thousands of people but does not always provide the guidance that many students need and crave. “We’ve deployed this in the real world, and it works better than we expected,” said Chelsea Finn, a Stanford professor and A.I. researcher who helped build the new system. Evidence Dr. Finn and her team designed this system solely for Stanford’s programming class. But they used techniques that could automate student feedback in other situations, including for classes beyond programming. Claim Oren Etzioni, chief executive of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and a former professor of computer science at the University of Washington, cautioned that these techniques are a very long way from duplicating human instructors. Feedback and advice from professors, teaching assistants and tutors is always preferable to an automated critique. Evidence Still, Dr. Etzioni called the Stanford project a “step in an important direction,” with automated feedback better than none at all. Counterclaim The online course taken by Mr. Pham and thousands of others this spring is based on a class that Stanford has offered for more than a decade. Each semester, the university gives students a midterm test filled with programming exercises, and it keeps a digital record of the results, including the reams of code written by students as well as pointed critiques of each program from university instructors. Evidence This decade of data is what drove the university’s new experiment in artificial intelligence. Claim Dr. Finn and her team built a neural network, a mathematical system that can learn skills from vast amounts of data. By pinpointing patterns in thousands of cat photos, a neural network can learn to identify a cat. By analyzing hundreds of old phone calls, it can learn to recognize spoken words. Or, by examining the way teaching assistants evaluate coding tests, it can learn to evaluate these tests on its own. The Stanford system spent hours analyzing examples from old midterms, learning from a decade of possibilities. Then it was ready to learn more. When given just a handful of extra examples from the new exam offered this spring, it could quickly grasp the task at hand. “It sees many kinds of problems,” said Mike Wu, another researcher who worked on the project. “Then it can adapt to problems it has never seen before.” This spring, the system provided 16,000 pieces of feedback, and students agreed with the feedback 97.9 percent of the time, according to a study by the Stanford researchers. By comparison, students agreed with the feedback from human instructors 96.7 percent of the time. Mr. Pham, an engineering student at Lund University in Sweden, was surprised the technology worked so well. Although the automated tool was unable to evaluate one of his programs (presumably because he had written a snippet of code unlike anything the A.I. had ever seen), it both identified specific bugs in his code, including what is known in computer programming and mathematics as a fence post error, and suggested ways of fixing them. “It is seldom you receive such well thought out feedback,” Mr. Pham said. Evidence The technology was effective because its role was so sharply defined. In taking the test, Mr. Pham wrote code with very specific aims, and there were only so many ways that he and other students could go wrong. Claim But given the right data, neural networks can learn a range of tasks. This is the same fundamental technology that identifies faces in the photos you post to Facebook, recognizes the commands you bark into your iPhone and translates from one language to another on services like Skype and Google Translate. For the Stanford team and other researchers, the hope is that these techniques can automate education in many other ways. Rebuttal Researchers have been building automated teaching tools since the 1970s, including robo-tutors and computerized essay graders. But progress has been slow. Building a system that can simply and clearly guide students often requires years of work, with designers struggling to define each tiny piece of behavior. Using the methods that drove the Stanford project, researchers can significantly accelerate this work. “There is real power in data,” said Peter Foltz, a professor at the University of Colorado who has spent decades developing systems that can automatically grade prose essays. “As machines get more examples, they can generalize.” Evidence Prose may seem very different from computer code. But in this case, it is not. In recent years, researchers have built technology that can analyze natural language in much the same way the Stanford system analyzes computer code. Although the Stanford system provides sharp feedback, it is useless if students have any questions about where they went wrong. But for Chris Piech, the Stanford professor who helped oversee the class, replacing instructors is not the goal. Rebuttal The new automated system is a way of reaching more students than instructors could otherwise reach on their own. And if it can clearly pinpoint problems in student code, showing the specific coding mistakes they are making and how frequently they are making them, it could help instructors better understand which students need help and how to help them. As Dr. Piech put it: “The future is symbiotic — teachers and A.I. working together.” Concluding Statement

nytimes\aids-pandemic-covid.txt

Using custom data configuration default-43c527e43a46eb96
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-43c527e43a46eb96\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-43c527e43a46eb96\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-91531cd381e8d63f.arrow

The early 1990s were in many ways the most terrible of those first years of the AIDS epidemic in America. Research on the disease was in high gear, but drug after drug failed to stop H.I.V. Funerals for friends and family in their 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s continued unabated, and many of us at risk for getting sick had given up hope of a normal life. My friends and I, most of us just a few years out of college, lived in the moment because we weren’t sure of how much time we had left. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9077416062355042}
My cousin Carl died from AIDS-related lymphoma in July 1995. That was also the year I found out that I, too, was H.I.V. positive. I wondered if Carl’s fate might be my own soon enough. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9147146940231323}
But then we got lucky. In 1996 a new generation of treatments called protease inhibitors emerged that were able to control H.I.V. Doctors talked about the Lazarus effect: watching their patients go from near death to health. I enrolled in a clinical trial and started taking the drugs that year. I am alive because of them. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.7329007983207703}
In 1996 the writer Andrew Sullivan came to a meeting of an AIDS activist group I co-founded a few years earlier to push AIDS drug development and research forward. It was just after the data on these protease inhibitors had been unveiled at a major scientific conference. We were known as a crew of hard-core skeptics of claims by drug companies and scientists, but the data clearly showed these drugs were revolutionary. They would change the trajectory of the epidemic for many people, including me. Mr. Sullivan went on to write a piece for The New York Times Magazine titled “When Plagues End,” which was published in November of that year and rightly noted that AIDS was no longer a death sentence for all infected by the virus but a chronic manageable illness. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8976370096206665}
Of course, as Mr. Sullivan recognized, the AIDS pandemic didn’t fully end. In a way it did end for many white middle-class gay men like us; we had access to these drugs and to good medical care overall and could start to think about getting back to normal. But AIDS still lingered and flourished in America in places that were easy for people like us to ignore. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5925618410110474}
The virus took root in the African American and Latino communities, particularly among young gay men. It moved from New York City and San Francisco to the South and into rural areas, tracing the geography of health disparities in this country. H.I.V. also continued to ravage Africa, and the pills I was taking wouldn’t be available widely there for several years, until activists shamed the world into taking notice. Rather than acknowledge that high drug prices were keeping the pills out of the hands of others, one U.S. official said that Africans couldn’t tell time and thus the AIDS drugs would do no good there. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9936611652374268}
Nearly three decades later, we’re in the midst of a different pandemic. And we’ve gotten lucky again: We have vaccines for Covid-19, and they are also revolutionary. The pandemic has changed. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5484721660614014}
And once more, the desire to get back to normal and to declare the end of another pandemic, at least for some of us, is palpable after more than two years of death, suffering and hardship. Governors’ recent lifting of mask mandates reflects that. There’s a demobilization that many suggest is contingent on what might happen with new variants but could easily become permanent. Much, if not most, of the country has moved on or wants to move on from Covid-19. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9198237657546997}
It’s also clear that SARS-CoV-2 will be with us for the foreseeable future and that it, too, will follow the fault lines of social and economic inequality in America. It will persist in countries — likely many in Africa — where people have insufficient access to coronavirus vaccines. Some will blame low vaccination rates on the hesitancy of those nations’ residents rather than drug companies withholding their vaccine technology to allow for global scale-up. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9255291819572449}
There has to be a better way out of the rubble of the past two years. What would it mean to move into a future in which a common fate mattered as much as our own? It would mean no one was disposable. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.3119671642780304}
The lesson of the AIDS pandemic is that it’s easy to leave people behind, even if it is at the cost of our collective peril. Coronavirus variants can develop in people with weakened immune systems who struggle to clear infections on their own, like those with untreated H.I.V. Think of the home we’ve then made for viruses like SARS-CoV-2 by impeding access to vaccines and by allowing millions to go without AIDS treatment even now. Variants can emerge because of our desire to put it all behind us. No one is truly safe until we all are. Yet might we act to save millions of people not just in the interest of self-preservation but also simply because it’s the right thing to do? That would be a signal that this pandemic has changed us. For good. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8755511045455933}

The early 1990s were in many ways the most terrible of those first years of the AIDS epidemic in America. Research on the disease was in high gear, but drug after drug failed to stop H.I.V. Funerals for friends and family in their 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s continued unabated, and many of us at risk for getting sick had given up hope of a normal life. My friends and I, most of us just a few years out of college, lived in the moment because we weren’t sure of how much time we had left. My cousin Carl died from AIDS-related lymphoma in July 1995. That was also the year I found out that I, too, was H.I.V. positive. I wondered if Carl’s fate might be my own soon enough. Evidence But then we got lucky. In 1996 a new generation of treatments called protease inhibitors emerged that were able to control H.I.V. Doctors talked about the Lazarus effect: watching their patients go from near death to health. I enrolled in a clinical trial and started taking the drugs that year. I am alive because of them. Rebuttal In 1996 the writer Andrew Sullivan came to a meeting of an AIDS activist group I co-founded a few years earlier to push AIDS drug development and research forward. It was just after the data on these protease inhibitors had been unveiled at a major scientific conference. We were known as a crew of hard-core skeptics of claims by drug companies and scientists, but the data clearly showed these drugs were revolutionary. They would change the trajectory of the epidemic for many people, including me. Mr. Sullivan went on to write a piece for The New York Times Magazine titled “When Plagues End,” which was published in November of that year and rightly noted that AIDS was no longer a death sentence for all infected by the virus but a chronic manageable illness. Of course, as Mr. Sullivan recognized, the AIDS pandemic didn’t fully end. In a way it did end for many white middle-class gay men like us; we had access to these drugs and to good medical care overall and could start to think about getting back to normal. But AIDS still lingered and flourished in America in places that were easy for people like us to ignore. The virus took root in the African American and Latino communities, particularly among young gay men. It moved from New York City and San Francisco to the South and into rural areas, tracing the geography of health disparities in this country. H.I.V. also continued to ravage Africa, and the pills I was taking wouldn’t be available widely there for several years, until activists shamed the world into taking notice. Rather than acknowledge that high drug prices were keeping the pills out of the hands of others, one U.S. official said that Africans couldn’t tell time and thus the AIDS drugs would do no good there. Nearly three decades later, we’re in the midst of a different pandemic. And we’ve gotten lucky again: We have vaccines for Covid-19, and they are also revolutionary. The pandemic has changed. And once more, the desire to get back to normal and to declare the end of another pandemic, at least for some of us, is palpable after more than two years of death, suffering and hardship. Governors’ recent lifting of mask mandates reflects that. There’s a demobilization that many suggest is contingent on what might happen with new variants but could easily become permanent. Much, if not most, of the country has moved on or wants to move on from Covid-19. It’s also clear that SARS-CoV-2 will be with us for the foreseeable future and that it, too, will follow the fault lines of social and economic inequality in America. It will persist in countries — likely many in Africa — where people have insufficient access to coronavirus vaccines. Some will blame low vaccination rates on the hesitancy of those nations’ residents rather than drug companies withholding their vaccine technology to allow for global scale-up. Evidence There has to be a better way out of the rubble of the past two years. What would it mean to move into a future in which a common fate mattered as much as our own? It would mean no one was disposable. Concluding Statement The lesson of the AIDS pandemic is that it’s easy to leave people behind, even if it is at the cost of our collective peril. Coronavirus variants can develop in people with weakened immune systems who struggle to clear infections on their own, like those with untreated H.I.V. Think of the home we’ve then made for viruses like SARS-CoV-2 by impeding access to vaccines and by allowing millions to go without AIDS treatment even now. Variants can emerge because of our desire to put it all behind us. No one is truly safe until we all are. Yet might we act to save millions of people not just in the interest of self-preservation but also simply because it’s the right thing to do? That would be a signal that this pandemic has changed us. For good. Evidence

nytimes\allison-gollust-cnn-cuomo.txt

Using custom data configuration default-36b949763b8cdb73
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-36b949763b8cdb73\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-36b949763b8cdb73\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-fe1c69b0acebb843.arrow

On a Saturday in March 2020, as Covid-19 was invading the United States, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo went on CNN for a live interview. Among other topics, he was asked about a possible government-enforced quarantine of New York that had been floated by President Donald J. Trump. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6625468134880066}
It was a newsworthy topic, but its path onto viewers’ screens would turn out to be controversial — and highly consequential for the future of one of the world’s most powerful news networks. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4195939302444458}
Before the interview, Governor Cuomo had told a senior CNN executive, Allison Gollust, about subjects that he’d like to be asked about on air, according to several people familiar with the matter. Ms. Gollust, CNN’s longtime chief of communications and marketing and a former top aide of the governor, passed along the topics to CNN producers and then reported back to the governor. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9698039293289185}
“Done,” she wrote. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6661335229873657}
On Tuesday, Ms. Gollust was forced to resign from CNN after an internal investigation found a trove of written communications between her and Governor Cuomo, including messages about the March 2020 appearance, the people said. Jeff Zucker, who at the time was CNN’s president, was aware of many of the communications between Ms. Gollust and the governor, the people said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9225661754608154}
The episode is the latest example of how closely entwined CNN’s leadership was with one of the country’s most prominent Democratic politicians. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7243562936782837}
Producers and bookers for television news shows routinely talk with guests before their scheduled appearances and discuss questions and topics that are likely to come up on air. It is unusual, though, for a senior executive to be involved in that pre-interview process — especially when that executive previously worked for the person who’s being interviewed. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8450614213943481}
Risa Heller, a spokeswoman for Ms. Gollust, said the communications with the governor were appropriate. Ms. Gollust “in no way suggested that inclusion of these topics was a condition of the interview, nor did she suggest the interview should be limited to these subjects,” Ms. Heller said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7667871713638306}
She added: “WarnerMedia relying on this everyday practice as justification for dismissing Allison demonstrates how ignorant they are of journalistic practices, and further proves that her dismissal is nothing more than retaliation.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5841470956802368}
CNN, whose slogan is “the most trusted name in news,” is facing mounting questions about how its senior executives and its top-rated anchor — Chris Cuomo, the governor’s younger brother — steered coverage of Governor Cuomo, who resigned last summer. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5109984278678894}
In a memo to employees this week, Jason Kilar, the chief executive of WarnerMedia, which is CNN’s parent company, wrote that Ms. Gollust was resigning after the internal investigation found unspecified “violations of company policies, including CNN’s news standards and practices,” by her, Mr. Zucker and Chris Cuomo. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9016107320785522}
Her resignation was the latest blow to CNN, which was already reeling in the wake of Mr. Zucker’s abrupt ouster two weeks earlier. Mr. Zucker said he was leaving because he had failed to disclose a romantic relationship with Ms. Gollust. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7394388318061829}
The internal review, conducted by the law firm of Cravath Swaine & Moore, began last fall with an examination of allegations of workplace misconduct against Chris Cuomo.  {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5007926821708679}
Mr. Zucker fired Mr. Cuomo in December, days after the network received a letter claiming that Mr. Cuomo had years earlier sexually assaulted a woman and that he later offered to air a flattering CNN segment about her employer. The woman perceived that as an effort to buy her silence. Mr. Cuomo has denied the allegations. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9296104907989502}
Mr. Cuomo also came under fire for having closely advised his brother on how to fend off a sexual misconduct scandal that ultimately forced the governor to resign. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4665948450565338}
After Mr. Cuomo’s departure from CNN, the Cravath review took on a life of its own, and it quickly upended the news network. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5201113820075989}
Investigators learned that Mr. Zucker and Ms. Gollust, who had worked closely together on and off for more than two decades, were having a romantic affair that had not been disclosed to human resources or other executives at WarnerMedia. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5987403392791748}
The Cravath investigators also uncovered extensive written communications between Governor Cuomo and Ms. Gollust, who had briefly worked for the governor in late 2012 and early 2013, the people said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.683821439743042}
It wasn’t clear what all of those communications were about. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7091872096061707}
But investigators found messages during the pandemic in which Governor Cuomo informed Ms. Gollust about three specific subjects that he wanted to be covered during a March 28, 2020, appearance at CNN, the people said. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8615080118179321}
They said those topics included his recent phone conversation with Mr. Trump and the effect of New York’s being placed under lockdown. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7332106828689575}
Ms. Gollust then sent messages to CNN staff requesting that the governor be asked about those subjects. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5921604633331299}
The Cravath lawyers reviewed broadcast transcripts that showed that the anchor asked about the subjects that Ms. Gollust had put forward, the people said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5172919631004333}
Ms. Heller, the spokeswoman for Ms. Gollust, said that Ms. Gollust “acted as the principal booker for Governor Cuomo during the early days of the pandemic” and that her role was “well known by the entire network.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.855991780757904}
It was unclear whether Mr. Zucker knew that Ms. Gollust passed on Governor Cuomo’s request about interview topics. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5066589117050171}
A spokesman for WarnerMedia referred The New York Times to the memo that the company sent to employees on Tuesday night. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6736355423927307}
The back-to-back exits of Mr. Zucker and Ms. Gollust have raised questions about the future direction of CNN. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6271766424179077}
WarnerMedia, which is owned by AT&T, is set to be spun off and merged with Discovery Inc. in the coming months. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5544350147247314}
WarnerMedia has tried to keep a lid on the internal drama, initially remaining tight-lipped about the circumstances of Mr. Zucker’s departure and then issuing a short, vaguely worded memo on Tuesday night about Ms. Gollust’s departure and unspecified journalistic lapses. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5042212605476379}
Even in conversations with CNN staff, executives and newsroom leaders have been mostly mum, to the mounting frustration of the network’s journalists and other employees. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5147730112075806}
In a pair of Zoom meetings on Wednesday with CNN employees, Michael Bass and Ken Jautz, who stepped in as two of the network’s interim leaders after Mr. Zucker’s departure, said Ms. Gollust had committed serious violations of the network’s journalistic standards, four people who attended the virtual meetings said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9393091201782227}
WarnerMedia’s top communications official, Christy Haubegger, also said in a staff meeting that Ms. Gollust’s transgressions had “to do with the Cuomos,” three people said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6619644165039062}
When employees pressed for more details, Ms. Haubegger said she was barred from saying more. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7257044315338135}
“Actions were taken to defend the institution and the brand,” she said on the call. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5120884776115417}
Ms. Haubegger urged CNN’s public relations team to try to focus public attention on the network’s journalism, including its foreign correspondents in Ukraine covering that country’s brewing conflict with Russia. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7263243198394775}
The internal investigation’s findings are especially notable because CNN journalists have repeatedly attacked Fox News personalities like Sean Hannity for having an overly close relationship with Republican leaders, in particular Mr. Trump. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5319948196411133}
Mr. Trump, in turn, repeatedly accused CNN of being a mouthpiece for Democrats. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.559249222278595}

On a Saturday in March 2020, as Covid-19 was invading the United States, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo went on CNN for a live interview. Among other topics, he was asked about a possible government-enforced quarantine of New York that had been floated by President Donald J. Trump. Evidence It was a newsworthy topic, but its path onto viewers’ screens would turn out to be controversial — and highly consequential for the future of one of the world’s most powerful news networks. Claim Before the interview, Governor Cuomo had told a senior CNN executive, Allison Gollust, about subjects that he’d like to be asked about on air, according to several people familiar with the matter. Ms. Gollust, CNN’s longtime chief of communications and marketing and a former top aide of the governor, passed along the topics to CNN producers and then reported back to the governor. Evidence “Done,” she wrote. Claim On Tuesday, Ms. Gollust was forced to resign from CNN after an internal investigation found a trove of written communications between her and Governor Cuomo, including messages about the March 2020 appearance, the people said. Jeff Zucker, who at the time was CNN’s president, was aware of many of the communications between Ms. Gollust and the governor, the people said. Evidence The episode is the latest example of how closely entwined CNN’s leadership was with one of the country’s most prominent Democratic politicians. Claim Producers and bookers for television news shows routinely talk with guests before their scheduled appearances and discuss questions and topics that are likely to come up on air. It is unusual, though, for a senior executive to be involved in that pre-interview process — especially when that executive previously worked for the person who’s being interviewed. Risa Heller, a spokeswoman for Ms. Gollust, said the communications with the governor were appropriate. Ms. Gollust “in no way suggested that inclusion of these topics was a condition of the interview, nor did she suggest the interview should be limited to these subjects,” Ms. Heller said. She added: “WarnerMedia relying on this everyday practice as justification for dismissing Allison demonstrates how ignorant they are of journalistic practices, and further proves that her dismissal is nothing more than retaliation.” CNN, whose slogan is “the most trusted name in news,” is facing mounting questions about how its senior executives and its top-rated anchor — Chris Cuomo, the governor’s younger brother — steered coverage of Governor Cuomo, who resigned last summer. In a memo to employees this week, Jason Kilar, the chief executive of WarnerMedia, which is CNN’s parent company, wrote that Ms. Gollust was resigning after the internal investigation found unspecified “violations of company policies, including CNN’s news standards and practices,” by her, Mr. Zucker and Chris Cuomo. Her resignation was the latest blow to CNN, which was already reeling in the wake of Mr. Zucker’s abrupt ouster two weeks earlier. Mr. Zucker said he was leaving because he had failed to disclose a romantic relationship with Ms. Gollust. Evidence The internal review, conducted by the law firm of Cravath Swaine & Moore, began last fall with an examination of allegations of workplace misconduct against Chris Cuomo. Claim Mr. Zucker fired Mr. Cuomo in December, days after the network received a letter claiming that Mr. Cuomo had years earlier sexually assaulted a woman and that he later offered to air a flattering CNN segment about her employer. The woman perceived that as an effort to buy her silence. Mr. Cuomo has denied the allegations. Evidence Mr. Cuomo also came under fire for having closely advised his brother on how to fend off a sexual misconduct scandal that ultimately forced the governor to resign. After Mr. Cuomo’s departure from CNN, the Cravath review took on a life of its own, and it quickly upended the news network. Claim Investigators learned that Mr. Zucker and Ms. Gollust, who had worked closely together on and off for more than two decades, were having a romantic affair that had not been disclosed to human resources or other executives at WarnerMedia. The Cravath investigators also uncovered extensive written communications between Governor Cuomo and Ms. Gollust, who had briefly worked for the governor in late 2012 and early 2013, the people said. Evidence It wasn’t clear what all of those communications were about. Claim But investigators found messages during the pandemic in which Governor Cuomo informed Ms. Gollust about three specific subjects that he wanted to be covered during a March 28, 2020, appearance at CNN, the people said. Rebuttal They said those topics included his recent phone conversation with Mr. Trump and the effect of New York’s being placed under lockdown. Ms. Gollust then sent messages to CNN staff requesting that the governor be asked about those subjects. The Cravath lawyers reviewed broadcast transcripts that showed that the anchor asked about the subjects that Ms. Gollust had put forward, the people said. Ms. Heller, the spokeswoman for Ms. Gollust, said that Ms. Gollust “acted as the principal booker for Governor Cuomo during the early days of the pandemic” and that her role was “well known by the entire network.” Evidence It was unclear whether Mr. Zucker knew that Ms. Gollust passed on Governor Cuomo’s request about interview topics. Claim A spokesman for WarnerMedia referred The New York Times to the memo that the company sent to employees on Tuesday night. Evidence The back-to-back exits of Mr. Zucker and Ms. Gollust have raised questions about the future direction of CNN. WarnerMedia, which is owned by AT&T, is set to be spun off and merged with Discovery Inc. in the coming months. Claim WarnerMedia has tried to keep a lid on the internal drama, initially remaining tight-lipped about the circumstances of Mr. Zucker’s departure and then issuing a short, vaguely worded memo on Tuesday night about Ms. Gollust’s departure and unspecified journalistic lapses. Even in conversations with CNN staff, executives and newsroom leaders have been mostly mum, to the mounting frustration of the network’s journalists and other employees. In a pair of Zoom meetings on Wednesday with CNN employees, Michael Bass and Ken Jautz, who stepped in as two of the network’s interim leaders after Mr. Zucker’s departure, said Ms. Gollust had committed serious violations of the network’s journalistic standards, four people who attended the virtual meetings said. WarnerMedia’s top communications official, Christy Haubegger, also said in a staff meeting that Ms. Gollust’s transgressions had “to do with the Cuomos,” three people said. Evidence When employees pressed for more details, Ms. Haubegger said she was barred from saying more. “Actions were taken to defend the institution and the brand,” she said on the call. Claim Ms. Haubegger urged CNN’s public relations team to try to focus public attention on the network’s journalism, including its foreign correspondents in Ukraine covering that country’s brewing conflict with Russia. The internal investigation’s findings are especially notable because CNN journalists have repeatedly attacked Fox News personalities like Sean Hannity for having an overly close relationship with Republican leaders, in particular Mr. Trump. Evidence Mr. Trump, in turn, repeatedly accused CNN of being a mouthpiece for Democrats. Claim

nytimes\american-girl-cafe-harry-hill-serena-kerrigan.txt

Using custom data configuration default-7eb9ee19cf97a818
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-7eb9ee19cf97a818\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-7eb9ee19cf97a818\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-2d691d9400e03285.arrow

On a Monday morning in February, Harry Hill, 27, showed up at the American Girl Cafe wearing a vintage Christian Dior sweater and carrying a Coach tote that held two of his beloved dolls. He was joined by Serena Kerrigan, 27, who brought her dolls in a pink mesh Victoria’s Secret bag. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9235830307006836}
Mr. Hill, an influencer, is well documented as a fan: He has posed at a 7-Eleven dressed identically to one of his dolls on Instagram. He dressed as the Samantha doll for Halloween and created a series of memes made with American Girl dolls. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9538633227348328}
Ms. Kerrigan, also an influencer, was dressed by her stylist in “head-to-toe Zara” — a Kelly green skirt suit with feather cuffs. “I am the green M&M,” she said of her outfit. Like the previous iteration of the green M&M character, Ms. Kerrigan’s personal brand can be ribald. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9536901712417603}
The last time she and Mr. Hill came to American Girl Place, she made a TikTok video in which she got her Samantha doll checked for S.T.I.s at the store’s doll hospital. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6030452847480774}
The two were far from the first adults to show up — with dolls — to hang out there. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6204659342765808}
“Come with me to get absolutely obliterated at the American Girl Doll Cafe,” begins a TikTok video titled “American Girls grow into American Women,” uploaded by the comedian Sally Darr Griffin. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4990297257900238}
In the video, Ms. Griffin, 25, shouts out the labels she’s wearing — “Dress is Hill House, sunglasses are Coach” — then takes the first sip of what will be four mimosas, supplemented with a tiny nip of vodka that she smuggled into the American Girl Cafe at the Grove shopping mall in Los Angeles. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9615163207054138}
Ms. Griffin was joined by four other women in their 20s, each accompanied by a doll seated in a chair attached to the table. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6734141111373901}
“I was not obliterated,” Ms. Griffin clarified in a Zoom interview. “It’s just better to say that for the clicks.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4183952212333679}
The clicks came. Ms. Griffin’s video amassed more than 600,000 views on TikTok, and a micro-trend of grown folks dining and drinking with dolls was born. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8981978297233582}
It’s not a wholly novel concept for adults to return to kid-centric locations for a dose of nostalgia and irony. Goths descended on Disneyland for an annual trip called “Bats Day in the Fun Park” for decades. Liana Aghajanian, a journalist in Detroit, wrote that she celebrated her birthdays at Chuck E. Cheese locations even in adulthood as a homage to happy childhood memories as a first-generation American. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9581606388092041}
Of the dozen American Girl Place locations, five feature full-service restaurants that serve items like cinnamon buns, macaroni and cheese, and smoothies, along with an extensive dessert menu. The original Chicago location, which opened in 1998, secured a full liquor license so it could host galas and benefits. New York is the only other location that serves liquor, but beer and wine are served at all of the cafes. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9922877550125122}
A representative for the company said that it doesn’t condone its dolls engaging in age-inappropriate behavior such as drinking alcohol, but the company welcomes American Girl fans of all ages. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7289145588874817}
Jamie Cygielman, the president of American Girl, wrote in a statement, “We know our devoted fans never forget the beloved American Girl characters and stories they grew up with, and we’re thrilled to have them reconnect and reminisce with us as adults.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8085130453109741}
The New York cafe, where Ms. Kerrigan and Mr. Hill recorded their social media content, features cutesy touches like tiny bows tied to each cloth napkin. The banquettes are berry colored, and the photo-ready walls feature bright patterns set against crisp whites. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9829056262969971}
Even the cafe’s soundtrack, which mixes 1980s pop staples with campy original songs written about the American Girl characters, seems tuned to the whims of Gen Zers and millennials looking for immersive settings for their social media feeds. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5262859463691711}
American Girl Place retail stores in the United States sell a wide variety of toys and accessories centered on upscale dolls, whose prices start at around $100. Each doll has a back story that locates her in a specific era of American history. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.939879834651947}
The first dolls, released in 1986, were Molly, a bookish girl from the 1940s; Kirsten, a pioneer from Sweden; and Samantha, an orphan adopted into a posh New York family during the Edwardian era. Each doll stars in historical novellas, which are sold separately. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9727559089660645}
Some American Girl fans identify with one doll’s personality, referring to themselves as “an Addy” or “a Felicity.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.42754003405570984}
When a staff member overheard me bemoaning the fact that Molly never gets her due among American Girl fans, she brought me a Molly doll and clipped her chair to the rim of my table. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8339250683784485}
Since 1986, many more characters have been added to the American Girl roster, expanding the eras and ethnicities represented by the dolls. American Girl also sells custom dolls, and introduced Logan, its first American Boy, in 2017. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9467638731002808}
For some adults, the American Girl Place retail locations loomed large in their childhood psyches. Ms. Kerrigan, who appeared in a New York Daily News story about American Girl Place’s opening, has been a fan of the brand since she was 4. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8860629796981812}
“It’s literally my dream come true,” Ms. Kerrigan said, of returning to the store as an adult. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.38436952233314514}
Her dining companion was similarly effusive. “It’s Disneyland for literary girls and gays,” said Mr. Hill in a Zoom interview. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7451676726341248}
The company has taken notice of Mr. Hill’s enthusiasm. At an event for the luggage company Stoney Clover Lane in October, Ms. Cygielman recognized Mr. Hill and introduced herself. The company also hosted him as its guest at the Manhattan cafe a few weeks ago. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.97519850730896}
On this occasion, the two influencers posed for selfies, recorded content and mugged for their phones as servers brought several courses that included cinnamon buns, crudités, buttered noodles and chicken fingers. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8932410478591919}
The vast cafe was mostly empty apart from five other parties, each made up of children and their chaperones. Mr. Hill and Ms. Kerrigan took their seats, got their dolls situated and toasted rose martinis served in glasses rimmed with pink sugar. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9763884544372559}
For some, 11:30 is early for a drink, but Mr. Hill had already spent the morning mixing water with cranberry juice to simulate cocktails for a sponsored Instagram post. This time the vodka was real. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9457033276557922}
Dessert was particularly well suited for Instagram, with a rainbow layer cake modeled from an American Girl toy set, a cup of chocolate mousse meant to look like a potted daisy, and heart-shaped sugar cookies with an accompanying D.I.Y. frosting kit, all served by a remarkably attentive and gracious staff. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9769341349601746}
The store comped their meal, as they sometimes do for influencers, but Ms. Kerrigan insisted on running her credit card so she could tip their server. As she and Mr. Hill began to pack up their dolls, a party of six adults and no children was seated nearby. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.985156774520874}
They were visiting from Austin, Texas, to celebrate Timothy Flitton’s 33rd birthday. They were inspired to have their birthday party at the American Girl Cafe after seeing Ms. Griffin’s TikTok video. Like Ms. Griffin, they ordered mimosas. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9815793037414551}
“We’re living our millennial fantasy,” said Mx. Flitton, who sported aquamarine hair and a rainbow sweater. Kaylan Howard, a friend, agreed. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.48563459515571594}
“They were too expensive when I was a child,” Ms. Howard, 32, said of the dolls. “And now we can afford it, should we want it.” She didn’t want it, but said she appreciated the gratis loaners they were each given for the meal. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9432560205459595}
A server emerged from the kitchen carrying a birthday cake shaped like a giant petit four. Mx. Flitton and the rest of the party erupted in applause. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.5359991192817688}
The cheers died down as the waiter walked past the table. The cake was for someone seated behind them who was celebrating her ninth birthday. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7414999604225159}

On a Monday morning in February, Harry Hill, 27, showed up at the American Girl Cafe wearing a vintage Christian Dior sweater and carrying a Coach tote that held two of his beloved dolls. He was joined by Serena Kerrigan, 27, who brought her dolls in a pink mesh Victoria’s Secret bag. Mr. Hill, an influencer, is well documented as a fan: He has posed at a 7-Eleven dressed identically to one of his dolls on Instagram. He dressed as the Samantha doll for Halloween and created a series of memes made with American Girl dolls. Ms. Kerrigan, also an influencer, was dressed by her stylist in “head-to-toe Zara” — a Kelly green skirt suit with feather cuffs. “I am the green M&M,” she said of her outfit. Like the previous iteration of the green M&M character, Ms. Kerrigan’s personal brand can be ribald. The last time she and Mr. Hill came to American Girl Place, she made a TikTok video in which she got her Samantha doll checked for S.T.I.s at the store’s doll hospital. Evidence The two were far from the first adults to show up — with dolls — to hang out there. Claim “Come with me to get absolutely obliterated at the American Girl Doll Cafe,” begins a TikTok video titled “American Girls grow into American Women,” uploaded by the comedian Sally Darr Griffin. In the video, Ms. Griffin, 25, shouts out the labels she’s wearing — “Dress is Hill House, sunglasses are Coach” — then takes the first sip of what will be four mimosas, supplemented with a tiny nip of vodka that she smuggled into the American Girl Cafe at the Grove shopping mall in Los Angeles. Ms. Griffin was joined by four other women in their 20s, each accompanied by a doll seated in a chair attached to the table. “I was not obliterated,” Ms. Griffin clarified in a Zoom interview. “It’s just better to say that for the clicks.” The clicks came. Ms. Griffin’s video amassed more than 600,000 views on TikTok, and a micro-trend of grown folks dining and drinking with dolls was born. It’s not a wholly novel concept for adults to return to kid-centric locations for a dose of nostalgia and irony. Goths descended on Disneyland for an annual trip called “Bats Day in the Fun Park” for decades. Liana Aghajanian, a journalist in Detroit, wrote that she celebrated her birthdays at Chuck E. Cheese locations even in adulthood as a homage to happy childhood memories as a first-generation American. Of the dozen American Girl Place locations, five feature full-service restaurants that serve items like cinnamon buns, macaroni and cheese, and smoothies, along with an extensive dessert menu. The original Chicago location, which opened in 1998, secured a full liquor license so it could host galas and benefits. New York is the only other location that serves liquor, but beer and wine are served at all of the cafes. A representative for the company said that it doesn’t condone its dolls engaging in age-inappropriate behavior such as drinking alcohol, but the company welcomes American Girl fans of all ages. Jamie Cygielman, the president of American Girl, wrote in a statement, “We know our devoted fans never forget the beloved American Girl characters and stories they grew up with, and we’re thrilled to have them reconnect and reminisce with us as adults.” The New York cafe, where Ms. Kerrigan and Mr. Hill recorded their social media content, features cutesy touches like tiny bows tied to each cloth napkin. The banquettes are berry colored, and the photo-ready walls feature bright patterns set against crisp whites. Even the cafe’s soundtrack, which mixes 1980s pop staples with campy original songs written about the American Girl characters, seems tuned to the whims of Gen Zers and millennials looking for immersive settings for their social media feeds. American Girl Place retail stores in the United States sell a wide variety of toys and accessories centered on upscale dolls, whose prices start at around $100. Each doll has a back story that locates her in a specific era of American history. The first dolls, released in 1986, were Molly, a bookish girl from the 1940s; Kirsten, a pioneer from Sweden; and Samantha, an orphan adopted into a posh New York family during the Edwardian era. Each doll stars in historical novellas, which are sold separately. Some American Girl fans identify with one doll’s personality, referring to themselves as “an Addy” or “a Felicity.” When a staff member overheard me bemoaning the fact that Molly never gets her due among American Girl fans, she brought me a Molly doll and clipped her chair to the rim of my table. Since 1986, many more characters have been added to the American Girl roster, expanding the eras and ethnicities represented by the dolls. American Girl also sells custom dolls, and introduced Logan, its first American Boy, in 2017. For some adults, the American Girl Place retail locations loomed large in their childhood psyches. Ms. Kerrigan, who appeared in a New York Daily News story about American Girl Place’s opening, has been a fan of the brand since she was 4. “It’s literally my dream come true,” Ms. Kerrigan said, of returning to the store as an adult. Her dining companion was similarly effusive. “It’s Disneyland for literary girls and gays,” said Mr. Hill in a Zoom interview. The company has taken notice of Mr. Hill’s enthusiasm. At an event for the luggage company Stoney Clover Lane in October, Ms. Cygielman recognized Mr. Hill and introduced herself. The company also hosted him as its guest at the Manhattan cafe a few weeks ago. On this occasion, the two influencers posed for selfies, recorded content and mugged for their phones as servers brought several courses that included cinnamon buns, crudités, buttered noodles and chicken fingers. The vast cafe was mostly empty apart from five other parties, each made up of children and their chaperones. Mr. Hill and Ms. Kerrigan took their seats, got their dolls situated and toasted rose martinis served in glasses rimmed with pink sugar. For some, 11:30 is early for a drink, but Mr. Hill had already spent the morning mixing water with cranberry juice to simulate cocktails for a sponsored Instagram post. This time the vodka was real. Dessert was particularly well suited for Instagram, with a rainbow layer cake modeled from an American Girl toy set, a cup of chocolate mousse meant to look like a potted daisy, and heart-shaped sugar cookies with an accompanying D.I.Y. frosting kit, all served by a remarkably attentive and gracious staff. The store comped their meal, as they sometimes do for influencers, but Ms. Kerrigan insisted on running her credit card so she could tip their server. As she and Mr. Hill began to pack up their dolls, a party of six adults and no children was seated nearby. They were visiting from Austin, Texas, to celebrate Timothy Flitton’s 33rd birthday. They were inspired to have their birthday party at the American Girl Cafe after seeing Ms. Griffin’s TikTok video. Like Ms. Griffin, they ordered mimosas. “We’re living our millennial fantasy,” said Mx. Flitton, who sported aquamarine hair and a rainbow sweater. Kaylan Howard, a friend, agreed. “They were too expensive when I was a child,” Ms. Howard, 32, said of the dolls. “And now we can afford it, should we want it.” She didn’t want it, but said she appreciated the gratis loaners they were each given for the meal. Evidence A server emerged from the kitchen carrying a birthday cake shaped like a giant petit four. Mx. Flitton and the rest of the party erupted in applause. Lead The cheers died down as the waiter walked past the table. The cake was for someone seated behind them who was celebrating her ninth birthday. Evidence

nytimes\andrew-prince-charles-charity.txt

Using custom data configuration default-7bfce597a2e65be1
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-7bfce597a2e65be1\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-7bfce597a2e65be1\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-ffec955b0d0c5d84.arrow

LONDON — In a royal family where scandal seems to rotate among its members with nearly metronomic regularity, one might have predicted that Tuesday’s news that Prince Andrew had settled a sexual abuse lawsuit against him would soon be followed by a fresh, troubling disclosure about another royal. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7766624093055725}
Sure enough, not 24 hours later, London’s Metropolitan Police announced an investigation into allegations that a charity led by Prince Charles offered to help with a knighthood and British citizenship for a wealthy Saudi in return for a donation. A spokesman for Charles insisted that he had no knowledge of any deal. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7256742119789124}
For Queen Elizabeth II, it was a fraught start to a year that is supposed to celebrate her seven decades on the throne. And yet for all the questions surrounding the Prince’s Foundation — which have already led to the resignation of its chief executive — the downfall of Prince Andrew is likely to leave a more lasting stain on the House of Windsor. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.700318455696106}
While Andrew, the queen’s second son, did not admit guilt in the settlement, he was forced to commend Virginia Giuffre, who accused him of raping her when she was a teenager, for her bravery in coming forward. He also agreed to pay her a sum that London newspapers reported to be more than $13 million. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8396693468093872}
“We are in new waters,” said Ed Owens, a historian who has written about the relationship between the media and the monarchy. “This kind of case has never been brought against a member of the royal family. That’s why we’re witnessing the family having so much trouble moving on from this.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7531160712242126}
The prospect of days of unsavory testimony from Ms. Giuffre about her experiences with Andrew was evidently so sobering that it persuaded the prince and the royal family to put an end to the case, at very high cost in money and reputation, even after Andrew, 61, had vowed he would fight to clear his name. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6289101839065552}
For all the differences, the troubles of Andrew and Charles both raise murky questions about money and how it moves in the opaque world of royalty. Who will pay Andrew’s settlement remains a mystery: analysts who track the family’s wealth say it is unlikely that he could pay it without help from the queen or others. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.8952858448028564}
In the case of Charles, the question is whether his onetime closest adviser, Michael Fawcett, offered a Saudi billionaire, Mahfouz bin Mahfouz, help with his application for British citizenship, as well as a knighthood, while he was also soliciting him for a donation of 10 million pounds ($13.5 million). Mr. Mahfouz has denied any wrongdoing. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9014642238616943}
“It’s bringing to light the secrecy and silence that exists over the royal finances,” Mr. Owens said. “The fact that there is this lack of transparency is going to become increasingly difficult in this social media-driven world. People are more sensitive to the obfuscation.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8573813438415527}
The Sunday Times and the Mail on Sunday reported the allegations about a “cash-for-honors” deal at the Prince’s Foundation last year, the charity commissioned an independent investigation, and Mr. Fawcett resigned as its chief executive.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8764297366142273}
The police said on Wednesday that they had enough evidence to open a formal investigation of whether the foundation violated a 1925 law that prohibits the sale of peerages or other royal honors. It is using the same unit that is investigating whether social gatherings at Downing Street violated coronavirus lockdown restrictions. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9686087369918823}
If Scotland Yard uncovers evidence that Charles knew about a potential quid-pro-quo, royal experts said, that would pose a grave risk to the 73-year-old heir to the throne. Even without the involvement of Charles, it could cast a harsh spotlight on the aggressive methods of the prince’s lieutenants. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7406442761421204}
For the 95-year-old queen, the threat to Charles is, in some ways, an even bigger headache than Andrew’s disgrace. With her own recent health problems and her Platinum Jubilee celebrations looming, she has been moving to put the family’s affairs in order. She declared recently, for example, that when Charles ascends to the throne, his wife, Camilla, should be known as queen. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9845671653747559}
But this week has served as a reminder of her fragility. On Wednesday, when two visitors to Windsor Castle asked her how she was, the queen, smiling and clutching a walking stick, gestured to her legs, and said, “Well, as you see, I can’t move.” {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.735876202583313}
“The clock is ticking,” said Peter Hunt, a former royal correspondent for the BBC. “They’re desperately trying to clear the path for Charles. Now, on that path is suddenly strewn Michael Fawcett.” {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.4778062403202057}
Cash-for-honors scandals are a familiar, if unseemly, fixture in British politics. Both the Conservative and Labour parties have been ensnared in them. The allegations against Andrew, by contrast, are of a wholly different nature — amplified by the #MeToo movement and darkened by the prince’s association with the financier and convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8752453327178955}
Having failed to persuade a judge to dismiss the case, Andrew faced the prospect of being interviewed under oath by Ms. Giuffre’s lawyers. In her suit, she claimed that the prince had abused her, including subjecting her to “involuntary sexual intercourse,” at Mr. Epstein’s houses in New York and in the Caribbean. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7707527875900269}
“The imperative for Andrew was to settle before the deposition was taken in late March,” said Daniel Taylor, a lawyer in London who has represented clients in privacy cases against the tabloids for phone hacking. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6968757510185242}
The fact that Andrew settled the case seems to have added to the sense of public scorn, even though out-of-court settlements are as common in Britain as they are in the United States. The headlines in London’s tabloids summed up the prevailing disgust. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.664092481136322}
“His Final Disgrace,” thundered the Sun. “Andrew cuts sex case deal … But there’s no way back,” said the Daily Express. “Royal wrong’un pays out to sex victim he’s never met. As you do,” said the Daily Star, referring to Andrew’s assertion, in a misbegotten 2019 interview with the BBC, that he had “no recollection” of ever meeting Ms. Giuffre. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.928303599357605}
The Star ran the headline over a now-familiar photo taken in a London townhouse, which appeared to show Andrew with his arm around the girl’s bare waist, as Mr. Epstein’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, smiled in the background. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.873932957649231}
Buckingham Palace has banished Andrew to internal exile, stripping him of his honorary military titles and his official duties, and warned there would be no rehabilitation. But it left unclear whether the queen, who earns more than $30 million a year from vast private real estate holdings, would help pay the settlement. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9469122886657715}
“The short answer is, he doesn’t have enough,” said David McClure, the author of “Royal Legacy,” a book on the monarchy’s finances. “The queen does have enough. And paying 10 million pounds is a relatively small amount compared to the reputational damage that could be done to the family with a court case.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.48833927512168884}

LONDON — In a royal family where scandal seems to rotate among its members with nearly metronomic regularity, one might have predicted that Tuesday’s news that Prince Andrew had settled a sexual abuse lawsuit against him would soon be followed by a fresh, troubling disclosure about another royal. Sure enough, not 24 hours later, London’s Metropolitan Police announced an investigation into allegations that a charity led by Prince Charles offered to help with a knighthood and British citizenship for a wealthy Saudi in return for a donation. A spokesman for Charles insisted that he had no knowledge of any deal. For Queen Elizabeth II, it was a fraught start to a year that is supposed to celebrate her seven decades on the throne. And yet for all the questions surrounding the Prince’s Foundation — which have already led to the resignation of its chief executive — the downfall of Prince Andrew is likely to leave a more lasting stain on the House of Windsor. While Andrew, the queen’s second son, did not admit guilt in the settlement, he was forced to commend Virginia Giuffre, who accused him of raping her when she was a teenager, for her bravery in coming forward. He also agreed to pay her a sum that London newspapers reported to be more than $13 million. “We are in new waters,” said Ed Owens, a historian who has written about the relationship between the media and the monarchy. “This kind of case has never been brought against a member of the royal family. That’s why we’re witnessing the family having so much trouble moving on from this.” The prospect of days of unsavory testimony from Ms. Giuffre about her experiences with Andrew was evidently so sobering that it persuaded the prince and the royal family to put an end to the case, at very high cost in money and reputation, even after Andrew, 61, had vowed he would fight to clear his name. Evidence For all the differences, the troubles of Andrew and Charles both raise murky questions about money and how it moves in the opaque world of royalty. Who will pay Andrew’s settlement remains a mystery: analysts who track the family’s wealth say it is unlikely that he could pay it without help from the queen or others. Concluding Statement In the case of Charles, the question is whether his onetime closest adviser, Michael Fawcett, offered a Saudi billionaire, Mahfouz bin Mahfouz, help with his application for British citizenship, as well as a knighthood, while he was also soliciting him for a donation of 10 million pounds ($13.5 million). Mr. Mahfouz has denied any wrongdoing. “It’s bringing to light the secrecy and silence that exists over the royal finances,” Mr. Owens said. “The fact that there is this lack of transparency is going to become increasingly difficult in this social media-driven world. People are more sensitive to the obfuscation.” The Sunday Times and the Mail on Sunday reported the allegations about a “cash-for-honors” deal at the Prince’s Foundation last year, the charity commissioned an independent investigation, and Mr. Fawcett resigned as its chief executive. The police said on Wednesday that they had enough evidence to open a formal investigation of whether the foundation violated a 1925 law that prohibits the sale of peerages or other royal honors. It is using the same unit that is investigating whether social gatherings at Downing Street violated coronavirus lockdown restrictions. If Scotland Yard uncovers evidence that Charles knew about a potential quid-pro-quo, royal experts said, that would pose a grave risk to the 73-year-old heir to the throne. Even without the involvement of Charles, it could cast a harsh spotlight on the aggressive methods of the prince’s lieutenants. For the 95-year-old queen, the threat to Charles is, in some ways, an even bigger headache than Andrew’s disgrace. With her own recent health problems and her Platinum Jubilee celebrations looming, she has been moving to put the family’s affairs in order. She declared recently, for example, that when Charles ascends to the throne, his wife, Camilla, should be known as queen. Evidence But this week has served as a reminder of her fragility. On Wednesday, when two visitors to Windsor Castle asked her how she was, the queen, smiling and clutching a walking stick, gestured to her legs, and said, “Well, as you see, I can’t move.” Rebuttal “The clock is ticking,” said Peter Hunt, a former royal correspondent for the BBC. “They’re desperately trying to clear the path for Charles. Now, on that path is suddenly strewn Michael Fawcett.” Lead Cash-for-honors scandals are a familiar, if unseemly, fixture in British politics. Both the Conservative and Labour parties have been ensnared in them. The allegations against Andrew, by contrast, are of a wholly different nature — amplified by the #MeToo movement and darkened by the prince’s association with the financier and convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein. Having failed to persuade a judge to dismiss the case, Andrew faced the prospect of being interviewed under oath by Ms. Giuffre’s lawyers. In her suit, she claimed that the prince had abused her, including subjecting her to “involuntary sexual intercourse,” at Mr. Epstein’s houses in New York and in the Caribbean. “The imperative for Andrew was to settle before the deposition was taken in late March,” said Daniel Taylor, a lawyer in London who has represented clients in privacy cases against the tabloids for phone hacking. The fact that Andrew settled the case seems to have added to the sense of public scorn, even though out-of-court settlements are as common in Britain as they are in the United States. The headlines in London’s tabloids summed up the prevailing disgust. “His Final Disgrace,” thundered the Sun. “Andrew cuts sex case deal … But there’s no way back,” said the Daily Express. “Royal wrong’un pays out to sex victim he’s never met. As you do,” said the Daily Star, referring to Andrew’s assertion, in a misbegotten 2019 interview with the BBC, that he had “no recollection” of ever meeting Ms. Giuffre. The Star ran the headline over a now-familiar photo taken in a London townhouse, which appeared to show Andrew with his arm around the girl’s bare waist, as Mr. Epstein’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, smiled in the background. Buckingham Palace has banished Andrew to internal exile, stripping him of his honorary military titles and his official duties, and warned there would be no rehabilitation. But it left unclear whether the queen, who earns more than $30 million a year from vast private real estate holdings, would help pay the settlement. “The short answer is, he doesn’t have enough,” said David McClure, the author of “Royal Legacy,” a book on the monarchy’s finances. “The queen does have enough. And paying 10 million pounds is a relatively small amount compared to the reputational damage that could be done to the family with a court case.” Evidence

nytimes\apple-face-computers.txt

Using custom data configuration default-2dad5fdc01a92483
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-2dad5fdc01a92483\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-2dad5fdc01a92483\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-25333c2adde2b787.arrow

This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. Here is a collection of past columns. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.7628713846206665}
If the tech predictions pan out, we’ll soon be wearing computers on our faces and plugging into immersive realms of virtual people and places, perhaps blended with the real world around us. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5435035824775696}
(I don’t want to use the buzzword “metaverse” here, because ugh. This term from science fiction has been applied to anything and everything that we should just call the internet. But that’s partly what I’m talking about.) {'label': 'Position', 'score': 0.3765868544578552}
I am both apprehensive and excited about the potential next generation of technologies that may further blur the lines between computers and us, and between online and real life. I can get into the idea of glasses that let me scroll restaurant menu items and feel as if the sizzling burger is in front of me, or into headgear that lets me exercise next to a virtual lake in Patagonia. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6500239372253418}
No one can predict how long it might take this imagined future of the internet to come true and go mainstream, if it ever does. But if computers on our faces and more lifelike digital realities are coming for us, let’s start thinking through the implications now. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.4643705487251282}
I don’t have a fleshed out good humans’ guidebook for the metaverse. (Ugh, that word again.) But I know that instead of letting Mark Zuckerberg or the Apple chief executive Tim Cook decide on the etiquette, ethics, norms, rewards and risks of our potential brave new world of technology, we need to do it. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.41556909680366516}
How we use technology shouldn’t be left to the companies that dream up electronics and software. It should be up to us, individually and collectively. That can happen by deliberate thought and careful design, or by the lack of it. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3425034284591675}
I’m writing this now because Apple reportedly plans to introduce its first computers for the face in the next year or so.  {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.43124496936798096}
Apple appears to imagine that its face computers — similar to Microsoft’s HoloLens, Snap’s experimental Spectacles or the failed Google Glass — will blend virtual images with the world around us, sometimes called “augmented reality.” Imagine watching a fix-it video of a car engine while a guide overlays diagrams on the fan belt that you’re trying to repair.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9721943140029907}
Apple has a reputation for making up-and-coming technology go mass market. We’ll see, but it’s clear that there will be a lot of activity and attention on face computers and immersive technologies in all forms. (Counterpoint: Some tech experts have predicted the rise of face computers for most of the past decade.) {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.5395137071609497}
What I want all of us to do — whether we don’t get the fuss over virtual reality or love it — is to begin deliberating over where we want to focus the promise of this technology and limit the risks. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4017264246940613}
I’m mindful of what has gone wrong when we allowed technology to wash over us and tried to figure out the details later. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5572004318237305}
Partly through an unwillingness or inability to imagine what could go wrong with technology, we have websites and apps that track us everywhere we go, and that sell the information to the highest bidders. We have carmakers that sometimes protect us with clever tech that helps offset human frailties, and other times seem to exacerbate them. We have the best aspects of human interactions online, and the worst. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9511705636978149}
We should think about this stuff now, before we might all be wearing supercomputers on our faces.  {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5326799750328064}
What do we want from this technology? Can we imagine schools, offices or comedy clubs in virtual reality? What do we want from the next generation of immersive internet for our kids? Do we want to drive while our headgear flings tweets into our fields of vision? Do we even want to erase the gap between digital life and real life? {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.8846819400787354}
It might be misguided to establish norms and laws around technologies that might take many years to become big. But tech companies and technologists aren’t waiting. They’re molding their imagined future of the internet now. If we don’t engage, that puts the companies in the driver’s seat. And we’ve seen the downside of that.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7208818197250366}
With the holiday season upon us, we want to hear from our readers about the new ways that you’re using technology (apps, social media, websites, gadgets or more) to help you plan your travel, parties, shopping or family time. Tell us about an app or site you use during the holidays and what makes it helpful, or the tech you stopped using and why. We may publish a selection of the responses in an upcoming newsletter. Email ontech@nytimes.com. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.48155200481414795}
Tracking the Chinese propaganda and censorship machine: After the Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai accused a former high-ranking government official of sexual assault, she vanished from public life. My colleagues and ProPublica analyzed how Chinese state media, amplified by a network of fake social media accounts, circulated messages that Shuai was safe and free.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9896761775016785}
Reading this will make you hungry: One man has made it his mission to have Mexico City’s street food vendors listed in Google Maps, Rest of World reported. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5388134717941284}
A gazillion speedy delivery apps. With similar fonts: A brand expert writes for Bloomberg Opinion about the similar italics, avocado photos and “bed-headed, bucket-hatted ‘cheat day’ mood of indulgence” used by start-ups like Gopuff, Getir, Fridge No More and Jokr that deliver convenience and grocery items in 15 minutes or less. (A subscription may be required.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9914944171905518}
“Behold the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex — all swaddled in a cozy Christmas sweater.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3294486701488495}
We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.39380958676338196}
If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. You can also read past On Tech columns. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.4619752764701843}

This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. Here is a collection of past columns. Lead If the tech predictions pan out, we’ll soon be wearing computers on our faces and plugging into immersive realms of virtual people and places, perhaps blended with the real world around us. Claim (I don’t want to use the buzzword “metaverse” here, because ugh. This term from science fiction has been applied to anything and everything that we should just call the internet. But that’s partly what I’m talking about.) Position I am both apprehensive and excited about the potential next generation of technologies that may further blur the lines between computers and us, and between online and real life. I can get into the idea of glasses that let me scroll restaurant menu items and feel as if the sizzling burger is in front of me, or into headgear that lets me exercise next to a virtual lake in Patagonia. Evidence No one can predict how long it might take this imagined future of the internet to come true and go mainstream, if it ever does. But if computers on our faces and more lifelike digital realities are coming for us, let’s start thinking through the implications now. I don’t have a fleshed out good humans’ guidebook for the metaverse. (Ugh, that word again.) But I know that instead of letting Mark Zuckerberg or the Apple chief executive Tim Cook decide on the etiquette, ethics, norms, rewards and risks of our potential brave new world of technology, we need to do it. Concluding Statement How we use technology shouldn’t be left to the companies that dream up electronics and software. It should be up to us, individually and collectively. That can happen by deliberate thought and careful design, or by the lack of it. Evidence I’m writing this now because Apple reportedly plans to introduce its first computers for the face in the next year or so. Claim Apple appears to imagine that its face computers — similar to Microsoft’s HoloLens, Snap’s experimental Spectacles or the failed Google Glass — will blend virtual images with the world around us, sometimes called “augmented reality.” Imagine watching a fix-it video of a car engine while a guide overlays diagrams on the fan belt that you’re trying to repair. Evidence Apple has a reputation for making up-and-coming technology go mass market. We’ll see, but it’s clear that there will be a lot of activity and attention on face computers and immersive technologies in all forms. (Counterpoint: Some tech experts have predicted the rise of face computers for most of the past decade.) Lead What I want all of us to do — whether we don’t get the fuss over virtual reality or love it — is to begin deliberating over where we want to focus the promise of this technology and limit the risks. I’m mindful of what has gone wrong when we allowed technology to wash over us and tried to figure out the details later. Claim Partly through an unwillingness or inability to imagine what could go wrong with technology, we have websites and apps that track us everywhere we go, and that sell the information to the highest bidders. We have carmakers that sometimes protect us with clever tech that helps offset human frailties, and other times seem to exacerbate them. We have the best aspects of human interactions online, and the worst. Evidence We should think about this stuff now, before we might all be wearing supercomputers on our faces. Claim What do we want from this technology? Can we imagine schools, offices or comedy clubs in virtual reality? What do we want from the next generation of immersive internet for our kids? Do we want to drive while our headgear flings tweets into our fields of vision? Do we even want to erase the gap between digital life and real life? Lead It might be misguided to establish norms and laws around technologies that might take many years to become big. But tech companies and technologists aren’t waiting. They’re molding their imagined future of the internet now. If we don’t engage, that puts the companies in the driver’s seat. And we’ve seen the downside of that. With the holiday season upon us, we want to hear from our readers about the new ways that you’re using technology (apps, social media, websites, gadgets or more) to help you plan your travel, parties, shopping or family time. Tell us about an app or site you use during the holidays and what makes it helpful, or the tech you stopped using and why. We may publish a selection of the responses in an upcoming newsletter. Email ontech@nytimes.com. Tracking the Chinese propaganda and censorship machine: After the Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai accused a former high-ranking government official of sexual assault, she vanished from public life. My colleagues and ProPublica analyzed how Chinese state media, amplified by a network of fake social media accounts, circulated messages that Shuai was safe and free. Reading this will make you hungry: One man has made it his mission to have Mexico City’s street food vendors listed in Google Maps, Rest of World reported. A gazillion speedy delivery apps. With similar fonts: A brand expert writes for Bloomberg Opinion about the similar italics, avocado photos and “bed-headed, bucket-hatted ‘cheat day’ mood of indulgence” used by start-ups like Gopuff, Getir, Fridge No More and Jokr that deliver convenience and grocery items in 15 minutes or less. (A subscription may be required.) “Behold the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex — all swaddled in a cozy Christmas sweater.” We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. Evidence If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. You can also read past On Tech columns. Concluding Statement

nytimes\at-yosemite-a-waterfall-turns-into-a-firefall.txt

Using custom data configuration default-cbd25a2499844d44
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-cbd25a2499844d44\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-cbd25a2499844d44\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-88b2f1a915ef35ed.arrow

For a few weeks in February if the conditions are just right, for about 10 minutes around sunset, one waterfall in Yosemite National Park looks more like its opposite — a firefall. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6506387591362}
Visitors who flocked to the California park last week, many with cameras in tow, have not been disappointed by the glowing transformation of Horsetail Fall, which flows from El Capitan. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4911796748638153}
“In the over 20 years I have been photographing the firefall and leading workshops there in Yosemite, I have never seen a more spectacular one,” said Michael Mariant, a photographer from Morro Bay, Calif., who leads teaching trips to Yosemite. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8820597529411316}
The phenomenon occurs if there has been enough snow and rain in the Sierra Mountains to fuel the waterfall, if the skies are clear and if the setting sun strikes the water at an angle that creates the illusion of lava. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9039559364318848}
Mike Gauthier, the park’s chief of staff, said that he was not sure if it was definitely the best firefall ever. But it certainly trumps the firefall the last few years, when drought turned Horsetail Fall mostly dry. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7162582278251648}
This cascade of glowing water is a natural alternative to another, discontinued Yosemite firefall tradition. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7649626135826111}
In the 1870s, the owners of a hotel in the park started dumping embers from a cooling fire off a cliff. From Curry Village, a camping and lodging area below, this happened to look like a flowing fire, and spectators would gather to marvel at the sight. Mr. Gauthier said that it ended in 1968 because of changes in the way officials thought about national parks — as sites for enjoying the natural world, not places for artificial spectacle. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9842155575752258}
The current Horsetail Fall phenomenon, traditionally viewed from points east of El Capitan, is expected to last at least for a few more days, according to Mr. Gauthier, when the sun still sets at the golden angle. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6870169639587402}

For a few weeks in February if the conditions are just right, for about 10 minutes around sunset, one waterfall in Yosemite National Park looks more like its opposite — a firefall. Evidence Visitors who flocked to the California park last week, many with cameras in tow, have not been disappointed by the glowing transformation of Horsetail Fall, which flows from El Capitan. Claim “In the over 20 years I have been photographing the firefall and leading workshops there in Yosemite, I have never seen a more spectacular one,” said Michael Mariant, a photographer from Morro Bay, Calif., who leads teaching trips to Yosemite. The phenomenon occurs if there has been enough snow and rain in the Sierra Mountains to fuel the waterfall, if the skies are clear and if the setting sun strikes the water at an angle that creates the illusion of lava. Mike Gauthier, the park’s chief of staff, said that he was not sure if it was definitely the best firefall ever. But it certainly trumps the firefall the last few years, when drought turned Horsetail Fall mostly dry. Evidence This cascade of glowing water is a natural alternative to another, discontinued Yosemite firefall tradition. Claim In the 1870s, the owners of a hotel in the park started dumping embers from a cooling fire off a cliff. From Curry Village, a camping and lodging area below, this happened to look like a flowing fire, and spectators would gather to marvel at the sight. Mr. Gauthier said that it ended in 1968 because of changes in the way officials thought about national parks — as sites for enjoying the natural world, not places for artificial spectacle. The current Horsetail Fall phenomenon, traditionally viewed from points east of El Capitan, is expected to last at least for a few more days, according to Mr. Gauthier, when the sun still sets at the golden angle. Evidence

nytimes\australia-tourism-covid.txt

Using custom data configuration default-e1b2a9f5882f2331
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-e1b2a9f5882f2331\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-e1b2a9f5882f2331\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-393634d76a453063.arrow

Moments after the Australian government announced that it would reopen the country’s borders to international travelers later this month, Emily Barrett locked in a fare for a flight to Sydney. The 32-year-old nanny from Palo Alto, Calif., spent three days researching and talking to Australian friends before she decided to book her trip to the island continent, which for two years had some of the world’s strictest border controls and longest lockdowns aimed at controlling the spread of the coronavirus. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.986412763595581}
“They all said, ‘if we go back into a lockdown now, people will go into the streets,’” she said. Her two-week trip is scheduled to start a few days after the border opens on Feb. 21. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8587943911552429}
Potential travelers and tourism operators alike are cautiously optimistic about the reopening of “Fortress Australia,” but many wonder if the isolated nation’s ongoing Covid restrictions — such as vaccine and testing requirements, as well as mask mandates — will make the return of international travel more of a trickle than a splash. Australia’s reputation for rigidity and reclusiveness during the pandemic — at odds with the inviting, easygoing nature portrayed by the country’s tourism boards — may also be a hurdle to overcome. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6218515038490295}
“There is no doubt that a full recovery will take time, but we are confident that the demand for Australia is strong,” said Phillipa Harrison, the managing director of Tourism Australia, the country’s tourism board. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6076861023902893}
Tourism was one of the fastest growing sectors in Australia’s economy before the pandemic, contributing 45 billion Australian dollars in 2019, or $32 billion. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4555005729198456}
Australia is among the world’s most immunized countries for Covid-19, with 94 percent of people over 16 fully vaccinated. Through 2020 and 2021, the country pursued a tough “zero Covid” strategy that closed national and state borders; restricted Australians from returning home and even leaving; enforced monthslong lockdowns and required its few visitors to undergo expensive hotel quarantines. Surging cases of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus in January, which persist, but have since declined, tipped most of the country into a new ‘living with the virus’ phase. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9726353287696838}
“It’s about coming back so the virus is under our control, whereas we felt that the virus was controlling us,” said Catherine Bennett, an epidemiologist at Deakin University in Melbourne, adding that opening the borders represented a turning point. “This is saying: We’re ready for this.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9323100447654724}
Australia’s grand reopening comes with a few ground rules. Travelers entering the country must be fully vaccinated to avoid a costly two-week hotel quarantine, and must test before arrival — somewhat common requirements for travel now. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4620964527130127}
But it will take a little more time for Australia’s welcome mat to roll out all the way. The entire state of Western Australia — a third of Australia’s vast land mass, but home to just 10 percent of the population — has essentially been closed to both international travelers and even vaccinated Australian citizens for most of the pandemic. It plans to reopen to vaccinated travelers on March 3, with testing rules on arrival. The state, which has reported about 2,900 total cases and 10 deaths since the pandemic began, is home to Perth — one of the world’s most remote major cities — more than 7,000 miles of coastline, the Kimberley region’s dramatic sandstone gorges and wine destinations like Margaret River. While the federal government can open the nation’s borders, the states can still set their own Covid restrictions, including entry rules.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6077098250389099}
“We desperately want people to come back,” said Graeme Skeggs, a general manager at Adam’s Pinnacle Tours, one of Western Australia’s larger tour companies, which, until the pandemic, operated luxury tours of the state’s renowned coastlines and landscapes. Much of their business evaporated after Covid struck, and some smaller operators the company worked with have closed. “Two years is a lot longer than any of us thought,” Mr. Skeggs said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9701931476593018}
While many operators who rely on foreign tourists are hopeful, it’s clear that there is no simple return to prepandemic times. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5239050984382629}
China overtook New Zealand as Australia’s largest foreign tourist market for the first time in 2017, and 1.3 million visitors from mainland China spent more than $12 billion Australian dollars, or nearly $9 billion, in 2019, about 27 percent of the year’s international visitor spend. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9769766926765442}
With China still severely limiting outbound travel, that leaves a gaping hole in Australia’s tourism economy. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7452776432037354}
Michelle Chen opened the Apollo Surfcoast Chinese Restaurant in 2012 along Victoria’s Great Ocean Road — one of the state’s major scenic attractions, about a 2.5-hour drive from Melbourne — to cater to the hundreds of Chinese day-trippers who would stream off buses each day on their way to view the Twelve Apostles, a limestone rock formation farther down the coast. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9555762410163879}
When Australia closed to Chinese travelers on Feb. 1, 2020, she lost “nearly a hundred percent” of her business. In another stroke of misfortune, the restaurant burned down in April of last year. She reopened in December a few doors down. But Ms. Chen is not expecting her core customers to return for a long time. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.991100013256073}
She’s even revamped her menu, which used to feature dishes like Sichuan chile chicken that appealed to mainland Chinese visitors. Now the menu is “80 percent Australian-Chinese,” Ms. Chen said, with milder offerings like Mongolian beef. “I find I can’t sell the Chinese-Chinese dishes.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9790634512901306}
Another thing desperately she’s looking forward to with the return of international travel: more workers. “Everywhere is shortage of labor,” she said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8509906530380249}
In January, the Australian Open — one of the country’s biggest sporting events, which draws hundreds of millions of viewers annually — became a media circus when Novak Djokovic, the world’s number one men’s tennis player, who is not vaccinated, was detained and finally deported from Melbourne because of his risk for “civil unrest.” The drama, which stretched on for 10 days, triggered protests in Australia from groups who believed the battle was the latest example of Covid-related mandates trampling public freedoms. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9750771522521973}
“Strong borders are fundamental to the Australian way of life,” the country’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, said after the decision to cancel the tennis star’s visa. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.43259188532829285}
Australia’s fixation with border security is highly contentious within the country, particularly its harsh treatment of asylum seekers, but ultimately plays well with voters. But how would Mr. Djokovic’s unceremonious booting fit into Australia’s new “come on in” narrative? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.31351813673973083}
“From our view, it really highlights the strength of Australia’s border policies,” said Chris Allison, Tourism Australia’s acting manager of the Americas. While Mr. Djokovic’s treatment was divisive, he said, it showed that “Australia has zero tolerance in terms of requiring vaccinations to come into the country,” and affirms the message of “how we’re trying to reopen our borders safely and protect the health of the nation.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7952109575271606}
But time — and bookings — will tell if long-haul travelers are willing to bet on Australia’s reopening. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8742719888687134}
Some prefer to wait and see. Australia was where “everyone wanted to go” before the pandemic, said Samantha Carranza, a manager at Sky Tours, a travel agency in downtown Los Angeles. But “there isn’t much demand right now,” she said, adding that Australia’s protectiveness has made her clients cautious to travel there. “No one’s sure if it’s really open or not. Will it close again, will they get stuck there?” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9613306522369385}
The data shows that interest in travel to Australia is already on the rise: Flight bookings were up 200 percent following the border-opening announcement compared to the week before, according to Forward Keys, a travel analytics company. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6537935733795166}
“While the immediate jump in bookings is encouraging, the overall booking volume compared to the equivalent week in 2019 is modest,” said Olivier Ponti, the firm’s vice president of insights. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3916822671890259}
“I imagine there will be more and more confidence over the course of the year,” said Christie Hudson, a senior public relations manager at Expedia, the major online travel agency. “People are really ready to start thinking about these bucket-list trips again. I think for a lot of Americans, Australia is a bucket-list-type trip.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9475237727165222}
Cultural experiences led by Australia’s diverse Indigenous groups will be a focus of marketing to overseas travelers, according to Tourism Australia. But in the Northern Territory, the region with the highest proportion of Indigenous people, many remote communities are barred to outsiders until at least March 3 in an effort to protect the residents there from infection. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9450604319572449}
International visitors are key for the region’s Indigenous tourism sector: Before the pandemic, nearly 70 percent of overseas visitors to the Northern Territory engaged in Aboriginal tourism activities, compared to 16 percent of Australian tourists. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7620152235031128}
Victor Cooper, who owns and operates Ayal Aboriginal Tours in Kakadu National Park, said he used to welcome visitors from Europe and the United States to his “grandmother’s country,” where he taught them about bush tucker (native foods) and told traditional stories of the land. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9056172966957092}
“I had a really, really good thing in the overseas market, it took a long time to get that,” Mr. Cooper said. He has not had any overseas bookings since the reopening announcement, and worries things may be “complicated” for a while yet. “I don’t think I’m going to get the clients I used to have back in 2019.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6870766282081604}
Other tourism operators are already seeing signs of recovery, which gives them hope for a better year ahead. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8180713057518005}
“It’s good to see people again,” said Dave Gordon, an employee at Wake Up Bondi, a hostel on Sydney’s famous beach, of the limited number of travelers who have been filtering back in recent months. “It’s exciting.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7473686933517456}
Since the news of the border reopening, booking numbers for later in the year have risen, he said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7239107489585876}
The first year of the pandemic was “quite a struggle,” he said. To survive, the hostel, which is on Bondi Beach’s main thoroughfare, slashed its rates and accepted longer-term lodgers, and even closed for a period. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6611175537109375}
But the border opening removes a major hurdle for him and other operators across the country, who want to convey a clear message for would-be tourists thinking of Australia: “Come!” he said. “This is the time to travel.” {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.7568584680557251}
Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places for a Changed World for 2022. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5061874389648438}

Moments after the Australian government announced that it would reopen the country’s borders to international travelers later this month, Emily Barrett locked in a fare for a flight to Sydney. The 32-year-old nanny from Palo Alto, Calif., spent three days researching and talking to Australian friends before she decided to book her trip to the island continent, which for two years had some of the world’s strictest border controls and longest lockdowns aimed at controlling the spread of the coronavirus. “They all said, ‘if we go back into a lockdown now, people will go into the streets,’” she said. Her two-week trip is scheduled to start a few days after the border opens on Feb. 21. Potential travelers and tourism operators alike are cautiously optimistic about the reopening of “Fortress Australia,” but many wonder if the isolated nation’s ongoing Covid restrictions — such as vaccine and testing requirements, as well as mask mandates — will make the return of international travel more of a trickle than a splash. Australia’s reputation for rigidity and reclusiveness during the pandemic — at odds with the inviting, easygoing nature portrayed by the country’s tourism boards — may also be a hurdle to overcome. “There is no doubt that a full recovery will take time, but we are confident that the demand for Australia is strong,” said Phillipa Harrison, the managing director of Tourism Australia, the country’s tourism board. Tourism was one of the fastest growing sectors in Australia’s economy before the pandemic, contributing 45 billion Australian dollars in 2019, or $32 billion. Australia is among the world’s most immunized countries for Covid-19, with 94 percent of people over 16 fully vaccinated. Through 2020 and 2021, the country pursued a tough “zero Covid” strategy that closed national and state borders; restricted Australians from returning home and even leaving; enforced monthslong lockdowns and required its few visitors to undergo expensive hotel quarantines. Surging cases of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus in January, which persist, but have since declined, tipped most of the country into a new ‘living with the virus’ phase. “It’s about coming back so the virus is under our control, whereas we felt that the virus was controlling us,” said Catherine Bennett, an epidemiologist at Deakin University in Melbourne, adding that opening the borders represented a turning point. “This is saying: We’re ready for this.” Australia’s grand reopening comes with a few ground rules. Travelers entering the country must be fully vaccinated to avoid a costly two-week hotel quarantine, and must test before arrival — somewhat common requirements for travel now. But it will take a little more time for Australia’s welcome mat to roll out all the way. The entire state of Western Australia — a third of Australia’s vast land mass, but home to just 10 percent of the population — has essentially been closed to both international travelers and even vaccinated Australian citizens for most of the pandemic. It plans to reopen to vaccinated travelers on March 3, with testing rules on arrival. The state, which has reported about 2,900 total cases and 10 deaths since the pandemic began, is home to Perth — one of the world’s most remote major cities — more than 7,000 miles of coastline, the Kimberley region’s dramatic sandstone gorges and wine destinations like Margaret River. While the federal government can open the nation’s borders, the states can still set their own Covid restrictions, including entry rules. “We desperately want people to come back,” said Graeme Skeggs, a general manager at Adam’s Pinnacle Tours, one of Western Australia’s larger tour companies, which, until the pandemic, operated luxury tours of the state’s renowned coastlines and landscapes. Much of their business evaporated after Covid struck, and some smaller operators the company worked with have closed. “Two years is a lot longer than any of us thought,” Mr. Skeggs said. Evidence While many operators who rely on foreign tourists are hopeful, it’s clear that there is no simple return to prepandemic times. Claim China overtook New Zealand as Australia’s largest foreign tourist market for the first time in 2017, and 1.3 million visitors from mainland China spent more than $12 billion Australian dollars, or nearly $9 billion, in 2019, about 27 percent of the year’s international visitor spend. Evidence With China still severely limiting outbound travel, that leaves a gaping hole in Australia’s tourism economy. Claim Michelle Chen opened the Apollo Surfcoast Chinese Restaurant in 2012 along Victoria’s Great Ocean Road — one of the state’s major scenic attractions, about a 2.5-hour drive from Melbourne — to cater to the hundreds of Chinese day-trippers who would stream off buses each day on their way to view the Twelve Apostles, a limestone rock formation farther down the coast. When Australia closed to Chinese travelers on Feb. 1, 2020, she lost “nearly a hundred percent” of her business. In another stroke of misfortune, the restaurant burned down in April of last year. She reopened in December a few doors down. But Ms. Chen is not expecting her core customers to return for a long time. She’s even revamped her menu, which used to feature dishes like Sichuan chile chicken that appealed to mainland Chinese visitors. Now the menu is “80 percent Australian-Chinese,” Ms. Chen said, with milder offerings like Mongolian beef. “I find I can’t sell the Chinese-Chinese dishes.” Evidence Another thing desperately she’s looking forward to with the return of international travel: more workers. “Everywhere is shortage of labor,” she said. Claim In January, the Australian Open — one of the country’s biggest sporting events, which draws hundreds of millions of viewers annually — became a media circus when Novak Djokovic, the world’s number one men’s tennis player, who is not vaccinated, was detained and finally deported from Melbourne because of his risk for “civil unrest.” The drama, which stretched on for 10 days, triggered protests in Australia from groups who believed the battle was the latest example of Covid-related mandates trampling public freedoms. Evidence “Strong borders are fundamental to the Australian way of life,” the country’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, said after the decision to cancel the tennis star’s visa. Claim Australia’s fixation with border security is highly contentious within the country, particularly its harsh treatment of asylum seekers, but ultimately plays well with voters. But how would Mr. Djokovic’s unceremonious booting fit into Australia’s new “come on in” narrative? “From our view, it really highlights the strength of Australia’s border policies,” said Chris Allison, Tourism Australia’s acting manager of the Americas. While Mr. Djokovic’s treatment was divisive, he said, it showed that “Australia has zero tolerance in terms of requiring vaccinations to come into the country,” and affirms the message of “how we’re trying to reopen our borders safely and protect the health of the nation.” Evidence But time — and bookings — will tell if long-haul travelers are willing to bet on Australia’s reopening. Rebuttal Some prefer to wait and see. Australia was where “everyone wanted to go” before the pandemic, said Samantha Carranza, a manager at Sky Tours, a travel agency in downtown Los Angeles. But “there isn’t much demand right now,” she said, adding that Australia’s protectiveness has made her clients cautious to travel there. “No one’s sure if it’s really open or not. Will it close again, will they get stuck there?” The data shows that interest in travel to Australia is already on the rise: Flight bookings were up 200 percent following the border-opening announcement compared to the week before, according to Forward Keys, a travel analytics company. “While the immediate jump in bookings is encouraging, the overall booking volume compared to the equivalent week in 2019 is modest,” said Olivier Ponti, the firm’s vice president of insights. “I imagine there will be more and more confidence over the course of the year,” said Christie Hudson, a senior public relations manager at Expedia, the major online travel agency. “People are really ready to start thinking about these bucket-list trips again. I think for a lot of Americans, Australia is a bucket-list-type trip.” Cultural experiences led by Australia’s diverse Indigenous groups will be a focus of marketing to overseas travelers, according to Tourism Australia. But in the Northern Territory, the region with the highest proportion of Indigenous people, many remote communities are barred to outsiders until at least March 3 in an effort to protect the residents there from infection. International visitors are key for the region’s Indigenous tourism sector: Before the pandemic, nearly 70 percent of overseas visitors to the Northern Territory engaged in Aboriginal tourism activities, compared to 16 percent of Australian tourists. Victor Cooper, who owns and operates Ayal Aboriginal Tours in Kakadu National Park, said he used to welcome visitors from Europe and the United States to his “grandmother’s country,” where he taught them about bush tucker (native foods) and told traditional stories of the land. “I had a really, really good thing in the overseas market, it took a long time to get that,” Mr. Cooper said. He has not had any overseas bookings since the reopening announcement, and worries things may be “complicated” for a while yet. “I don’t think I’m going to get the clients I used to have back in 2019.” Evidence Other tourism operators are already seeing signs of recovery, which gives them hope for a better year ahead. Claim “It’s good to see people again,” said Dave Gordon, an employee at Wake Up Bondi, a hostel on Sydney’s famous beach, of the limited number of travelers who have been filtering back in recent months. “It’s exciting.” Evidence Since the news of the border reopening, booking numbers for later in the year have risen, he said. Claim The first year of the pandemic was “quite a struggle,” he said. To survive, the hostel, which is on Bondi Beach’s main thoroughfare, slashed its rates and accepted longer-term lodgers, and even closed for a period. Evidence But the border opening removes a major hurdle for him and other operators across the country, who want to convey a clear message for would-be tourists thinking of Australia: “Come!” he said. “This is the time to travel.” Rebuttal Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places for a Changed World for 2022. Evidence

nytimes\babies-work-meeting.txt

Using custom data configuration default-7117e82c71cf4e5e
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-7117e82c71cf4e5e\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-7117e82c71cf4e5e\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-6e61d5c6e7aa1a2d.arrow

Planning around naps, shelling out for nannies or yelling into the void — parents working from home all have ways of coping with the daily mayhem. For these intimate portraits — of anxiety, frustration and also unbridled joy — we visited the New York homes of working parents and photographed them during real video meetings at their jobs, occasionally donning noise-canceling headphones to preserve their offices’ privacy. All photos capture the natural reactions of both parent and child over the course of the meetings. (No babies were made to cry.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9590184092521667}
For Sheena Demby, remote work as a new parent felt utterly paralyzing at the start. “The first time I had Noah Olivia in a meeting, I didn’t know what to do,” says Demby, who works as a creative-operations program manager at Cash App. “Out of desperation, I tried so hard to keep her out of the camera and to keep her quiet so that I could still present myself as, like, competent and doing great work. But the reality was, I could not keep this little baby from crying. I could not keep her from interrupting meetings. As a first-time mom and Black woman in corporate America — where I already felt I had to show above-average results just to be visible — I really struggled.” Noah Olivia is now almost 2, and Demby has brought a bit more of her personal life into the Zoom window. She keeps a rolling cart of diapers, wipes and work materials by her side so she can work alongside her daughter in any room of their Harlem apartment. Remote work is now Demby’s long-term plan: “I have zero intentions of ever going back into an office,” she says.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9916614294052124}
To keep their adventurous 16-month-old twin girls, Clara and Tessa, from getting into too much trouble during work calls, Eric Sadkin and his husband, Klaus Koenigshausen, have recently become master maze designers. The pair, who work in real estate and private investment, are in the process of moving to a new apartment, so they have a bunch of cardboard boxes lying around — which they pile onto the floors into child-stymieing labyrinths when they anticipate lengthy meetings. “You can’t just run after them, because you’re in the middle of a Zoom call, so everything has to be baby-proofed to the max,” Koenigshausen says. “They are old enough to climb over the sofa and get into all kinds of trouble. So every day our sofa is a land of cushions, and our living room turns into a kids’ playground.” As a result, their entire one-bedroom Manhattan apartment, Sadkin says, “just looks littered, like an Amazon warehouse, with boxes to stop the kids going into random places and keep them in their play area. But we have peace of mind — because they can’t move.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9924966096878052}
Born near the start of the pandemic, 18-month-old Aslan is Kat Dinar’s third child — and he’s the one who compelled Dinar to switch from a pressurized front-office role to a calmer one in the back office of her finance company. Her new job, on a team that some refer to as the “mommy track,” affords her much more time at home with her husband and two older children in their Astoria, Queens, apartment. But still, Dinar wishes the choice hadn’t felt so necessary. “I’m a working mom,” Dinar says. “I’m not a stay-at-home mom — I never was, and I’ll never be. I need achievements at work, and I enjoy my kids; I love children. I don’t want to make these choices. I want to have it all.” Dinar yearns to see more support programs for working mothers and thinks terms like “work-life balance” oversimplify the realities of working parents. She adds that “women who have kids are indeed some of the best workers: You are the manager of your household. You delegate, give instructions, prioritize. You do everything. You are a manager and a leader and a woman.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9548475742340088}
Jerome Nathaniel was “prepared for chaos” when he and his wife became pandemic parents. “I love my job,” Nathaniel, who works at the nonprofit City Harvest, says. “We fight hunger, and hunger doesn’t just end, so your day never ends. I was just always working — you justify not having a personal life.” Thankfully his son, Mack, currently 3 months old, is “abnormally relaxed and cool and chill,” Nathaniel says. When it’s Nathaniel’s turn to care for him, Mack spends the bulk of his time napping in his father’s cradled arms while he takes video calls for grad school and work. Mack doesn’t care for screens — “and hopefully he never will, because we’re going to be a no-TV household,” says his father — but even with a relatively easygoing baby, Nathaniel has found himself having to reconfigure his attitude toward work. “If I work past 5 p.m. now, I know that’s not fair to my wife and my son and my family,” Nathaniel says. “If I were [working] in person, I couldn’t teach my kid how to smile on my lunch break.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9804297685623169}
Rachel Shapiro’s workday is a coil of meeting after meeting. As the senior vice president of marketing strategy at Complex, a digital entertainment company, she regularly shepherds calls across multiple departments — often over the sounds of her 2-year-old daughter, Waverly, or 6-month-old son, Sasha, throwing a spirited tantrum or having a meltdown under her desk. “I don’t know motherhood without the pandemic, and I haven’t quite known a meeting that hasn’t been infringed upon by one of my two children,” says Shapiro, who has become a pro at the text-chat function on Zoom and has also led many a work discussion — with the camera off — while breastfeeding, quelling cries or grappling with “back-to-back blowout diapers.” A saving grace for Shapiro has been her colleagues’ enthusiasm for Sasha or Waverly’s cameos in their meetings — and their patience for when things go awry. Once, “I was trying to lead a meeting on my AirPods while changing two diapers, literally covered in shit, and just thinking, Well, the show must go on!” she says, and sighs. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9152277708053589}
Even though Anna Li Sian’s daughter, Inez, is no longer a newborn with round-the-clock demands, things have felt harder than ever recently. “There’s sort of a triple isolation that’s happened with the pandemic: We’re socially distancing, and it’s cold, and we’re new parents in New York who have to be especially cautious with this unvaccinated person in our care,” says Sian, who works in podcast marketing and takes Zoom calls all day long from the Cobble Hill apartment she shares with her husband, Robby Abaya, a software engineer also working from home. The couple say that they could not have continued in their full-time jobs without child-care help — they employ a nanny, and luckily Anna’s mother is able to come over “in a pinch” — but that they’re still exhausted by the matrix of choices they have to contend with, outside work. Inez just turned 1; the pair would love to expose her to wider social circles but have deliberated for weeks about whether the thrill of an in-person birthday party outweighs the chance of a Covid scare. “We are always recalibrating our risk tolerance,” Abaya says. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9740274548530579}
Each morning, Oliver Abel wakes up and strategizes his day around the natural rhythms of his 1-year-old son, Oliver (or Ollie). Abel, a private wealth adviser who works mostly from his home in Bronxville, N.Y., prefers to shuffle his most important meetings around his son’s nap times. But even though he and his wife, who also works from home, map out their joint calendars meticulously in the mornings, the pair have learned to keep a number of go-to distractions on hand for when they are drawn into last-minute meetings. “It’s whatever I can do to keep him entertained while I have the meeting going on,” Abel — who, while working from home, has been able to witness major moments in Ollie’s life, like his first laugh and first attempts at crawling — says. And his son is pretty curious, it turns out. “Chewing on a calculator. Playing with my phone. Ripping up paper! He loves things that are new — so if you show him one of these items, he usually gets pretty distracted for 10 minutes or so.” Three shiny objects per 30-minute meeting usually do the trick. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.49842774868011475}
Irene Kelly has a nanny who comes during work hours to help out with her 9-month-old son, Henry, in her Forest Hills, Queens, apartment. But that doesn’t necessarily reduce any of her emotional load. “There’s never a break, even if the nanny’s here, because I hear him crying literally a room away,” Kelly, who works as an account executive at an insurance company, says. “And if I come downstairs to have a meal or a call, he sees me, and it’s like, ‘I only want my mom!’ There’s just so much pressure to make the right decisions.” While Kelly works from a makeshift setup at her dining-room table, her husband is currently working full time in a physical office. “Being home 24 hours with a baby is a blessing. But I get jealous of my husband sometimes because he has, to me, the freedom to compartmentalize,” Kelly says. “He has co-workers he can see regularly in a way that feels normal, and I’m behind a screen all day with this baby attached to me, who wants just as much attention as my job does. And each day, I’m not able to fully give myself 100 percent to either role.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9898151159286499}
Rachel Lee has two sons in different developmental stages — 8-month-old Nathan and 5-year-old Logan — so working at home means designing distractions for various skill levels, grappling with disparate sleep schedules and trying to find quiet while tending to her boisterous family. Lee, an in-house lawyer for a financial technology and data company, says that while the prolonged work-from-home period has allowed her to catch many precious milestones with Nathan that she wasn’t able to with Logan, it has also mired her in productivity guilt: “I don’t know if other moms feel this, but I think there’s an internal pressure that, being physically at home, I should be cooking dinners for my family and ordering out less, or getting more stuff done around the house,” she says. Lee quit her previous job in the pandemic and found a new company with more flexibility; now she and her husband are also thinking of swapping their Upper West Side apartment for a home closer to family members they’ve sorely missed over the last few years. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9851627945899963}
Daniela Ocana, a founder and the program director of a preschool in Maspeth, Queens, has found herself obsessing over how to keep her 8-month-old daughter, Riley, safe amid a pandemic. “You don’t want to keep your child in a bubble,” Ocana says. “But it is scary to go out there.” Ocana oversees Covid-19 safeguards at the preschool where she works — and thus, must also reassure scores of other anxious parents — so safety is always at the forefront of her mind. In times of immense stress, though, Riley’s presence helps ground her: “There’s been so many times I’ve stopped in the room and been, like, ‘You’re learning, I’m learning, we’ll get through this,’” Ocana says. “She has taught me that although motherhood is hard and working is hard, it’s possible to have patience and love. There’s times I finish video calls, like, sweating, but then I look at her, and she’s smiling or she’s just close to me, and it makes me realize that’s why I continue to do it.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9234099984169006}
Like many parents, David O’Brien, a lawyer and father to 5-month-old August, would prefer to be either working from an office or parenting from home — not both at once. “I think extending government-paid parental leave would be helpful for jobs that require focusing, or even just using both hands!” O’Brien says. Often, when August is on his father’s lap during a meeting, “I have to type notes contemporaneously, and I don’t want his head to get too close to the edge of the table, so I can only use one hand. Or there’s drool everywhere.” Intense multitasking was not the only change brought on by pandemic parenthood: When he and his wife, Alexandra, first had August, O’Brien was working in his dream job as a public defender, but the difficulty of raising a baby in a small Harlem apartment nudged him to look for other jobs in the field that could offer as much fulfillment but with higher pay. “I’m making decisions a little less for ideological reasons,” O’Brien says. “But I don’t know if that’s pandemic-related — it might just be being a parent.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9899875521659851}
Two years ago, Alison Taffel Rabinowitz was teaching at universities around New York City. But after a “really, really tough pregnancy” and the birth of her daughter, Evelyn Rose, Taffel Rabinowitz was forced to step away. She decided to start her own business and now runs private career coaching for women out of her Lower East Side apartment, with Evelyn Rose, now 6 months old, at her side. Some of her clients are working mothers seeking counsel about how to re-enter the work force. Her best advice to them? Emphasize the tremendous wins that have come out of motherhood rather than trying to gloss over the time away from work. “I’m proud that I figured this out and can still do what I love, while being able to focus with a baby, in some kind of weird way,” says Taffel Rabinowitz, who was able to breastfeed her daughter on camera while helping her clients negotiate for pay raises and new jobs. But Rabinowitz adds: “I could never write a résumé for being a mom. It’s a job that keeps getting more bullet points underneath that never end.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9588306546211243}

Planning around naps, shelling out for nannies or yelling into the void — parents working from home all have ways of coping with the daily mayhem. For these intimate portraits — of anxiety, frustration and also unbridled joy — we visited the New York homes of working parents and photographed them during real video meetings at their jobs, occasionally donning noise-canceling headphones to preserve their offices’ privacy. All photos capture the natural reactions of both parent and child over the course of the meetings. (No babies were made to cry.) For Sheena Demby, remote work as a new parent felt utterly paralyzing at the start. “The first time I had Noah Olivia in a meeting, I didn’t know what to do,” says Demby, who works as a creative-operations program manager at Cash App. “Out of desperation, I tried so hard to keep her out of the camera and to keep her quiet so that I could still present myself as, like, competent and doing great work. But the reality was, I could not keep this little baby from crying. I could not keep her from interrupting meetings. As a first-time mom and Black woman in corporate America — where I already felt I had to show above-average results just to be visible — I really struggled.” Noah Olivia is now almost 2, and Demby has brought a bit more of her personal life into the Zoom window. She keeps a rolling cart of diapers, wipes and work materials by her side so she can work alongside her daughter in any room of their Harlem apartment. Remote work is now Demby’s long-term plan: “I have zero intentions of ever going back into an office,” she says. To keep their adventurous 16-month-old twin girls, Clara and Tessa, from getting into too much trouble during work calls, Eric Sadkin and his husband, Klaus Koenigshausen, have recently become master maze designers. The pair, who work in real estate and private investment, are in the process of moving to a new apartment, so they have a bunch of cardboard boxes lying around — which they pile onto the floors into child-stymieing labyrinths when they anticipate lengthy meetings. “You can’t just run after them, because you’re in the middle of a Zoom call, so everything has to be baby-proofed to the max,” Koenigshausen says. “They are old enough to climb over the sofa and get into all kinds of trouble. So every day our sofa is a land of cushions, and our living room turns into a kids’ playground.” As a result, their entire one-bedroom Manhattan apartment, Sadkin says, “just looks littered, like an Amazon warehouse, with boxes to stop the kids going into random places and keep them in their play area. But we have peace of mind — because they can’t move.” Born near the start of the pandemic, 18-month-old Aslan is Kat Dinar’s third child — and he’s the one who compelled Dinar to switch from a pressurized front-office role to a calmer one in the back office of her finance company. Her new job, on a team that some refer to as the “mommy track,” affords her much more time at home with her husband and two older children in their Astoria, Queens, apartment. But still, Dinar wishes the choice hadn’t felt so necessary. “I’m a working mom,” Dinar says. “I’m not a stay-at-home mom — I never was, and I’ll never be. I need achievements at work, and I enjoy my kids; I love children. I don’t want to make these choices. I want to have it all.” Dinar yearns to see more support programs for working mothers and thinks terms like “work-life balance” oversimplify the realities of working parents. She adds that “women who have kids are indeed some of the best workers: You are the manager of your household. You delegate, give instructions, prioritize. You do everything. You are a manager and a leader and a woman.” Jerome Nathaniel was “prepared for chaos” when he and his wife became pandemic parents. “I love my job,” Nathaniel, who works at the nonprofit City Harvest, says. “We fight hunger, and hunger doesn’t just end, so your day never ends. I was just always working — you justify not having a personal life.” Thankfully his son, Mack, currently 3 months old, is “abnormally relaxed and cool and chill,” Nathaniel says. When it’s Nathaniel’s turn to care for him, Mack spends the bulk of his time napping in his father’s cradled arms while he takes video calls for grad school and work. Mack doesn’t care for screens — “and hopefully he never will, because we’re going to be a no-TV household,” says his father — but even with a relatively easygoing baby, Nathaniel has found himself having to reconfigure his attitude toward work. “If I work past 5 p.m. now, I know that’s not fair to my wife and my son and my family,” Nathaniel says. “If I were [working] in person, I couldn’t teach my kid how to smile on my lunch break.” Rachel Shapiro’s workday is a coil of meeting after meeting. As the senior vice president of marketing strategy at Complex, a digital entertainment company, she regularly shepherds calls across multiple departments — often over the sounds of her 2-year-old daughter, Waverly, or 6-month-old son, Sasha, throwing a spirited tantrum or having a meltdown under her desk. “I don’t know motherhood without the pandemic, and I haven’t quite known a meeting that hasn’t been infringed upon by one of my two children,” says Shapiro, who has become a pro at the text-chat function on Zoom and has also led many a work discussion — with the camera off — while breastfeeding, quelling cries or grappling with “back-to-back blowout diapers.” A saving grace for Shapiro has been her colleagues’ enthusiasm for Sasha or Waverly’s cameos in their meetings — and their patience for when things go awry. Once, “I was trying to lead a meeting on my AirPods while changing two diapers, literally covered in shit, and just thinking, Well, the show must go on!” she says, and sighs. Even though Anna Li Sian’s daughter, Inez, is no longer a newborn with round-the-clock demands, things have felt harder than ever recently. “There’s sort of a triple isolation that’s happened with the pandemic: We’re socially distancing, and it’s cold, and we’re new parents in New York who have to be especially cautious with this unvaccinated person in our care,” says Sian, who works in podcast marketing and takes Zoom calls all day long from the Cobble Hill apartment she shares with her husband, Robby Abaya, a software engineer also working from home. The couple say that they could not have continued in their full-time jobs without child-care help — they employ a nanny, and luckily Anna’s mother is able to come over “in a pinch” — but that they’re still exhausted by the matrix of choices they have to contend with, outside work. Inez just turned 1; the pair would love to expose her to wider social circles but have deliberated for weeks about whether the thrill of an in-person birthday party outweighs the chance of a Covid scare. “We are always recalibrating our risk tolerance,” Abaya says. Each morning, Oliver Abel wakes up and strategizes his day around the natural rhythms of his 1-year-old son, Oliver (or Ollie). Abel, a private wealth adviser who works mostly from his home in Bronxville, N.Y., prefers to shuffle his most important meetings around his son’s nap times. But even though he and his wife, who also works from home, map out their joint calendars meticulously in the mornings, the pair have learned to keep a number of go-to distractions on hand for when they are drawn into last-minute meetings. “It’s whatever I can do to keep him entertained while I have the meeting going on,” Abel — who, while working from home, has been able to witness major moments in Ollie’s life, like his first laugh and first attempts at crawling — says. And his son is pretty curious, it turns out. “Chewing on a calculator. Playing with my phone. Ripping up paper! He loves things that are new — so if you show him one of these items, he usually gets pretty distracted for 10 minutes or so.” Three shiny objects per 30-minute meeting usually do the trick. Irene Kelly has a nanny who comes during work hours to help out with her 9-month-old son, Henry, in her Forest Hills, Queens, apartment. But that doesn’t necessarily reduce any of her emotional load. “There’s never a break, even if the nanny’s here, because I hear him crying literally a room away,” Kelly, who works as an account executive at an insurance company, says. “And if I come downstairs to have a meal or a call, he sees me, and it’s like, ‘I only want my mom!’ There’s just so much pressure to make the right decisions.” While Kelly works from a makeshift setup at her dining-room table, her husband is currently working full time in a physical office. “Being home 24 hours with a baby is a blessing. But I get jealous of my husband sometimes because he has, to me, the freedom to compartmentalize,” Kelly says. “He has co-workers he can see regularly in a way that feels normal, and I’m behind a screen all day with this baby attached to me, who wants just as much attention as my job does. And each day, I’m not able to fully give myself 100 percent to either role.” Rachel Lee has two sons in different developmental stages — 8-month-old Nathan and 5-year-old Logan — so working at home means designing distractions for various skill levels, grappling with disparate sleep schedules and trying to find quiet while tending to her boisterous family. Lee, an in-house lawyer for a financial technology and data company, says that while the prolonged work-from-home period has allowed her to catch many precious milestones with Nathan that she wasn’t able to with Logan, it has also mired her in productivity guilt: “I don’t know if other moms feel this, but I think there’s an internal pressure that, being physically at home, I should be cooking dinners for my family and ordering out less, or getting more stuff done around the house,” she says. Lee quit her previous job in the pandemic and found a new company with more flexibility; now she and her husband are also thinking of swapping their Upper West Side apartment for a home closer to family members they’ve sorely missed over the last few years. Daniela Ocana, a founder and the program director of a preschool in Maspeth, Queens, has found herself obsessing over how to keep her 8-month-old daughter, Riley, safe amid a pandemic. “You don’t want to keep your child in a bubble,” Ocana says. “But it is scary to go out there.” Ocana oversees Covid-19 safeguards at the preschool where she works — and thus, must also reassure scores of other anxious parents — so safety is always at the forefront of her mind. In times of immense stress, though, Riley’s presence helps ground her: “There’s been so many times I’ve stopped in the room and been, like, ‘You’re learning, I’m learning, we’ll get through this,’” Ocana says. “She has taught me that although motherhood is hard and working is hard, it’s possible to have patience and love. There’s times I finish video calls, like, sweating, but then I look at her, and she’s smiling or she’s just close to me, and it makes me realize that’s why I continue to do it.” Like many parents, David O’Brien, a lawyer and father to 5-month-old August, would prefer to be either working from an office or parenting from home — not both at once. “I think extending government-paid parental leave would be helpful for jobs that require focusing, or even just using both hands!” O’Brien says. Often, when August is on his father’s lap during a meeting, “I have to type notes contemporaneously, and I don’t want his head to get too close to the edge of the table, so I can only use one hand. Or there’s drool everywhere.” Intense multitasking was not the only change brought on by pandemic parenthood: When he and his wife, Alexandra, first had August, O’Brien was working in his dream job as a public defender, but the difficulty of raising a baby in a small Harlem apartment nudged him to look for other jobs in the field that could offer as much fulfillment but with higher pay. “I’m making decisions a little less for ideological reasons,” O’Brien says. “But I don’t know if that’s pandemic-related — it might just be being a parent.” Two years ago, Alison Taffel Rabinowitz was teaching at universities around New York City. But after a “really, really tough pregnancy” and the birth of her daughter, Evelyn Rose, Taffel Rabinowitz was forced to step away. She decided to start her own business and now runs private career coaching for women out of her Lower East Side apartment, with Evelyn Rose, now 6 months old, at her side. Some of her clients are working mothers seeking counsel about how to re-enter the work force. Her best advice to them? Emphasize the tremendous wins that have come out of motherhood rather than trying to gloss over the time away from work. “I’m proud that I figured this out and can still do what I love, while being able to focus with a baby, in some kind of weird way,” says Taffel Rabinowitz, who was able to breastfeed her daughter on camera while helping her clients negotiate for pay raises and new jobs. But Rabinowitz adds: “I could never write a résumé for being a mom. It’s a job that keeps getting more bullet points underneath that never end.” Evidence

nytimes\basketball-celtics-ime-udoka.txt

Using custom data configuration default-cf0a2fefc44ccb80
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-cf0a2fefc44ccb80\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-cf0a2fefc44ccb80\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-435a4d776e978a3e.arrow

BOSTON — Ime Udoka has been emphasizing ball movement since the day the Celtics hired him as their coach. At his introductory news conference last June, Udoka apologized to Brad Stevens, his predecessor and the team’s newly appointed president of basketball operations, as a way of softening the blow before he pointed out that the Celtics had ranked near the bottom of the league in assists last season. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8588799834251404}
“We want to have more team basketball,” Udoka said at the time. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5371425747871399}
It was not instant fix for Udoka, whose team hobbled into the middle of January with a losing record. The ball was not moving. A bit of frustration was evident. But even during their struggles, Udoka sensed that his players were receptive to coaching, he said. So he reinforced his pass-first concepts in film sessions and by citing statistics that showed the offense was more potent when the ball zipped around the court. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9714533090591431}
“It took some time,” Udoka said on Wednesday, “but I think they’re embracing being playmakers and helping everyone else score, and I think it’s pleasing to me and noticeable when we play that way.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4054408669471741}
Entering the N.B.A.’s All-Star break, the Celtics have resurfaced as one of the better teams in the league after winning 11 of their last 13 games, a run of solid play that has vaulted them up the standings, quieted a few of their critics and shown that Udoka’s sharing-is-caring formula can work in their favor. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4479587972164154}
“The turnovers are down and the assists are up because we’re getting rid of the ball,” Udoka said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5505338311195374}
He made that observation a couple of hours before the Celtics (34-26) had their nine-game winning streak snapped on Wednesday night by the Detroit Pistons, one of the worst teams in the league. It was the second game of a back-to-back for the Celtics, who had routed the Philadelphia 76ers on Tuesday and were without two injured starters, Marcus Smart and Rob Williams. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9902586936950684}
Still, the loss was a reminder that good habits need to be nurtured, and one the Celtics can stew over before they resume their season against the Nets next Thursday. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.5668461918830872}
“There’s got to be an edge to us coming back,” the veteran forward Al Horford said, adding: “This is when the fun starts.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.489627867937088}
It always takes time for new coaches to incorporate their systems, no matter how talented their personnel. Dwane Casey, the coach of the Pistons, knows the feeling. Before Wednesday’s game, he recalled landing his first head coaching job in the N.B.A., with the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2005. Kevin Garnett, a colorful figure and a future Hall of Famer, made a habit of interrupting Casey whenever he tried to show the team a new play. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9749068021774292}
“It’s not easy,” Casey said. “You want to go in there with all these grand ideas, but you learn pretty quick that you’ve got to be flexible, that you’ve got to learn the players and they’ve got to get a feel for you.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5412859916687012}
Udoka had to be just as patient in Boston, where the Celtics’ season was less than two weeks old when a loss to the Chicago Bulls dropped their record to 2-5. Afterward, Smart, the team’s starting point guard, used his platform at a postgame news conference to criticize Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, the team’s top two players, for essentially hogging the ball. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9754215478897095}
The Celtics spent subsequent weeks wrestling with mediocrity — two wins here, three losses there — without much continuity. And they found themselves absorbing more barbs after a loss to the 76ers on Jan. 14. Joel Embiid, the 76ers’ All-Star center, stated the obvious: The Celtics were a one-on-one team. Embiid went so far as to compare them unfavorably to the Charlotte Hornets, whom the 76ers had played two days earlier. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9839408993721008}
“Charlotte, they move the ball extremely well and they have shooters all over the place,” Embiid told reporters. “Obviously, Boston is more of an iso-heavy team, so it becomes easier to load up and try to stop them.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9201381802558899}
Perhaps it was a message that the Celtics needed to hear. Tatum, 23, and Brown, 25, are terrific players, each capable of torching a conga line of defenders by himself. And there are certainly times when they should take advantage of their matchups. But Udoka wants all of his players to avoid “playing in a crowd,” he said, and to exercise more discretion. Above all, he seeks balance: fast breaks, pick-and-rolls, ball reversals. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9563264846801758}
“We have a multidimensional team that can score in a lot of different ways,” he said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6224746108055115}
Sure enough, the Celtics were rolling by the time they paid another visit to Philadelphia on Tuesday. Udoka delivered some pregame motivation by showing his players that old quote from Embiid — the one about them being “easier” to defend than the Hornets had been. “It stood out to me when he said it,” Udoka said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8321462869644165}
The Celtics won by 48 points. Doc Rivers, the coach of the 76ers, spent the game looking as though he were in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8697196841239929}
“You can literally see the improvement of the ball movement,” he said. “The old Boston is more isos. This Boston is driving and playing with each other, and that’s what makes them so much tougher.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6558160185813904}
The Celtics, who are also among the league leaders in defensive rating, made some savvy moves ahead of last week’s trade deadline by acquiring Derrick White, a versatile guard, and Daniel Theis, a defense-minded center. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6316162347793579}
As for the All-Star break, Udoka said he would spend time with his family. But he also plans to dive into film by revisiting the hard times. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7433135509490967}
“Really take a look at the struggles we had early,” he said, “and how we’ve turned the corner.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.44172030687332153}

BOSTON — Ime Udoka has been emphasizing ball movement since the day the Celtics hired him as their coach. At his introductory news conference last June, Udoka apologized to Brad Stevens, his predecessor and the team’s newly appointed president of basketball operations, as a way of softening the blow before he pointed out that the Celtics had ranked near the bottom of the league in assists last season. Evidence “We want to have more team basketball,” Udoka said at the time. Claim It was not instant fix for Udoka, whose team hobbled into the middle of January with a losing record. The ball was not moving. A bit of frustration was evident. But even during their struggles, Udoka sensed that his players were receptive to coaching, he said. So he reinforced his pass-first concepts in film sessions and by citing statistics that showed the offense was more potent when the ball zipped around the court. “It took some time,” Udoka said on Wednesday, “but I think they’re embracing being playmakers and helping everyone else score, and I think it’s pleasing to me and noticeable when we play that way.” Entering the N.B.A.’s All-Star break, the Celtics have resurfaced as one of the better teams in the league after winning 11 of their last 13 games, a run of solid play that has vaulted them up the standings, quieted a few of their critics and shown that Udoka’s sharing-is-caring formula can work in their favor. “The turnovers are down and the assists are up because we’re getting rid of the ball,” Udoka said. He made that observation a couple of hours before the Celtics (34-26) had their nine-game winning streak snapped on Wednesday night by the Detroit Pistons, one of the worst teams in the league. It was the second game of a back-to-back for the Celtics, who had routed the Philadelphia 76ers on Tuesday and were without two injured starters, Marcus Smart and Rob Williams. Evidence Still, the loss was a reminder that good habits need to be nurtured, and one the Celtics can stew over before they resume their season against the Nets next Thursday. Rebuttal “There’s got to be an edge to us coming back,” the veteran forward Al Horford said, adding: “This is when the fun starts.” It always takes time for new coaches to incorporate their systems, no matter how talented their personnel. Dwane Casey, the coach of the Pistons, knows the feeling. Before Wednesday’s game, he recalled landing his first head coaching job in the N.B.A., with the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2005. Kevin Garnett, a colorful figure and a future Hall of Famer, made a habit of interrupting Casey whenever he tried to show the team a new play. “It’s not easy,” Casey said. “You want to go in there with all these grand ideas, but you learn pretty quick that you’ve got to be flexible, that you’ve got to learn the players and they’ve got to get a feel for you.” Udoka had to be just as patient in Boston, where the Celtics’ season was less than two weeks old when a loss to the Chicago Bulls dropped their record to 2-5. Afterward, Smart, the team’s starting point guard, used his platform at a postgame news conference to criticize Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, the team’s top two players, for essentially hogging the ball. The Celtics spent subsequent weeks wrestling with mediocrity — two wins here, three losses there — without much continuity. And they found themselves absorbing more barbs after a loss to the 76ers on Jan. 14. Joel Embiid, the 76ers’ All-Star center, stated the obvious: The Celtics were a one-on-one team. Embiid went so far as to compare them unfavorably to the Charlotte Hornets, whom the 76ers had played two days earlier. “Charlotte, they move the ball extremely well and they have shooters all over the place,” Embiid told reporters. “Obviously, Boston is more of an iso-heavy team, so it becomes easier to load up and try to stop them.” Perhaps it was a message that the Celtics needed to hear. Tatum, 23, and Brown, 25, are terrific players, each capable of torching a conga line of defenders by himself. And there are certainly times when they should take advantage of their matchups. But Udoka wants all of his players to avoid “playing in a crowd,” he said, and to exercise more discretion. Above all, he seeks balance: fast breaks, pick-and-rolls, ball reversals. Evidence “We have a multidimensional team that can score in a lot of different ways,” he said. Claim Sure enough, the Celtics were rolling by the time they paid another visit to Philadelphia on Tuesday. Udoka delivered some pregame motivation by showing his players that old quote from Embiid — the one about them being “easier” to defend than the Hornets had been. “It stood out to me when he said it,” Udoka said. The Celtics won by 48 points. Doc Rivers, the coach of the 76ers, spent the game looking as though he were in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles. “You can literally see the improvement of the ball movement,” he said. “The old Boston is more isos. This Boston is driving and playing with each other, and that’s what makes them so much tougher.” The Celtics, who are also among the league leaders in defensive rating, made some savvy moves ahead of last week’s trade deadline by acquiring Derrick White, a versatile guard, and Daniel Theis, a defense-minded center. As for the All-Star break, Udoka said he would spend time with his family. But he also plans to dive into film by revisiting the hard times. Evidence “Really take a look at the struggles we had early,” he said, “and how we’ve turned the corner.” Claim

nytimes\basquiat-painting-orlando-mumford-museum.txt

Using custom data configuration default-3b9a4ce8bc518d71
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-3b9a4ce8bc518d71\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-3b9a4ce8bc518d71\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-9689f3c3173661ec.arrow

It seems like a story too good to be true, and for some in the art world, it is. Last weekend, 25 Jean-Michel Basquiat paintings were publicly unveiled at the Orlando Museum of Art before several thousand V.I.P.s. All of the paintings were said by the museum to have been created in late 1982 while Basquiat, 22, was living and working out of a studio space beneath Larry Gagosian’s home in Venice, Calif., preparing fresh canvases for a show at the art dealer’s Los Angeles gallery. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8085633516311646}
According to the Orlando museum director and chief executive, Aaron De Groft, the vibrant artworks — layers of mixed media painted and drawn onto slabs of scavenged cardboard ranging in size from a 10-inch square featuring one of the artist’s iconic crowns to a nearly five-foot-high disembodied head — were sold by Basquiat directly to the television screenwriter Thad Mumford. The price? A quick $5,000 in cash — about $14,000 today — paid without Gagosian’s knowledge. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9920861124992371}
The 25 artworks then disappeared for three decades, the museum said, only resurfacing in 2012 after Mumford failed to pay the bill on his Los Angeles storage unit, and its contents — the Basquiats tucked in amid baseball memorabilia and TV industry ephemera — were auctioned off. William Force, a treasure hunting “picker,” and Lee Mangin, his financial backer, who both scour small auctions for mislabeled items, saw photos of the colorful cardboards and eventually snagged the lot — for about $15,000. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9885013103485107}
Mangin provided receipts of the purchase and recounted the thrill of the hunt: “It’s sort of a deep hook that goes inside of you,” he said, likening it to being an art world Indiana Jones digging for lost artifacts. It certainly sounds like a tale straight out of Hollywood, or perhaps a script by the Emmy Award-winning Mumford. Indeed, Gagosian, in a response to this reporter about the 1982 creation of these Basquiats, said he “finds the scenario of the story highly unlikely.” Gagosian’s concerns were echoed by several curators known to write widely on Basquiat’s work, who have greeted the Orlando museum’s show with a stony public silence. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9808524250984192}
De Groft, the OMA director, bristled at such skepticism. “My reputation is at stake as well,” he said in an interview. “And I’ve absolutely no doubt these are Basquiats.” Beyond his own trained eye — he has a Ph.D. in art history from Florida State University — he cited a battery of reports commissioned by the artworks’ current owners. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6429955959320068}
These include a 2017 forensic investigation by the handwriting expert James Blanco which identified the signatures that appear on many of the paintings as being Basquiat’s; a 2017 analysis by the University of Maryland associate professor of art Jordana Moore Saggese, author of “Reading Basquiat: Exploring Ambivalence in American Art,” in which she too attributed the paintings to Basquiat; and signed 2018-19 statements from the late curator Diego Cortez, an early supporter of the artist and founding member of his estate’s now-dissolved authentication committee, which declared each of the paintings to be genuine Basquiats. In light of the imprimatur Cortez’s name carries with historians, his certifications were accompanied by photographs showing the curator mid-signature. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9904450178146362}
But the foremost proof in De Groft’s mind was a short poem by Mumford in 1982 commemorating the artworks’ creation and the meeting that the owners say occurred between Basquiat, then an artist on the rise, and Mumford, then one of the few Black screenwriters working within network TV and riding high as a producer and writer for the top-rated “M*A*S*H.” {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.7729873657226562}
Lines from the poem seem to refer both to Mumford’s ’70s work voicing a “Dr. Thad” for “Sesame Street,” his upcoming script for the “M*A*S*H” series finale, the “25 paintings bringing riches,” and the two men’s shared spirit as “no longer outsiders, Industry insiders golden crowns receiving … We film, we write, we film, we paint.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9301179051399231}
It is said to have been written and typed up by Mumford, then initialed in oilstick by Basquiat (and confirmed as genuine by Blanco). The poem was not in Mumford’s storage locker contents, according to Mangin, but was handed to him by Mumford in 2012. After buying the paintings, Mangin said he and Force tracked down the screenwriter, who told them over lunch how he had bought the Basquiats in 1982 as an investment on the recommendation of a friend. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9887924790382385}
“The poem is almost like a receipt, it refers to the works, it refers to the inscriptions in the works, it refers to the time,” De Groft said. “I’ve absolutely no doubt.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6812228560447693}
Before his death in 1988 from a drug overdose, Basquiat is believed to have made approximately 2,100 artworks, from small drawings to a paint-adorned refrigerator door, according to the Brooklyn Museum. Could these slices of cardboard have been among them? While it’s certainly difficult to imagine Gagosian, living just one floor above Basquiat and keeping close tabs on his studio progress, or Basquiat’s gallery-employed studio assistant and de facto chauffeur, John Seed, not noticing the creation and sale of 25 detailed paintings on canvas, those painted on cardboard are more easily concealable. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9634360671043396}
Seed has written about driving Basquiat to an appointment with a doctor whose medical bill was paid with drawings. And as noted by Phoebe Hoban in her 1998 biography “Basquiat,” “Anybody with the right attitude and the right amount of money could purchase something from the painter, who was constantly in need of cash to support his various habits.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9457454681396484}
Gagosian himself conceded to Hoban that his own accounting methods with Basquiat were hardly traditional: “It was the way he chose to be paid, in cash, or in barter, or with clothes, or like he’d say ‘Well, buy my girlfriend a trip to Paris.’” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4087965786457062}
More than just professional reputations now rest on the question of these paintings’ true background. The value of Basquiat’s work has soared: In 2017 one of his paintings sold for $110.5 million at Sotheby’s — the current auction high for an American artwork. If the 25 Mumford-purchased paintings are authenticated as actual Basquiats, Putnam Fine Art and Antique Appraisals puts their total worth at close to $100 million. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9846246242523193}
An official verdict on this whodunit by the Basquiat estate is now impossible — it closed its authentication committee in 2012 in the aftermath of a lawsuit over Basquiat artworks initially deemed fake. (Amid similar time-consuming and expensive litigation, the Andy Warhol estate closed its own authentication committee that same year.) Yet without such a stamp of estate approval, or an established provenance, major auction houses and heavyweight art dealers are reluctant to handle such works. Despite several years of being quietly shopped around the secondary art market, these Basquiats have to date found no takers, according to the owners. The Orlando museum showing could help dispel that market wariness, lending them a new air of institutional legitimacy. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.92879718542099}
Sotheby’s declined to comment on the authenticity of these paintings. Several art world professionals were similarly gun-shy, citing the experience of the estate’s authentication committee and their fear that publicly weighing in could embroil them in a lawsuit with the paintings’ current owners. One dealer who personally worked with Basquiat and saw photographs of the paintings in the Orlando museum said, “the way Basquiat places elements in the composition has an interior logic which is missing in these images.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9353076815605164}
In addition to Force and Mangin, partial ownership of the artworks now lies with one of Los Angeles’s most prominent trial lawyers, Pierce O’Donnell, famed for successful litigation against a veritable who’s who of the city’s glitterati, from the actor Brad Pitt (on behalf of his ex-wife Angelina Jolie) to the former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7562865018844604}
O’Donnell told The New York Times that he purchased an interest in six of the 25 paintings after Force, who had read about his authentication efforts on behalf of a disputed Jackson Pollock painting, approached him for help with the Basquiats. It was news coverage of this same Pollock legal standoff that also led the OMA’s De Groft to contact O’Donnell and then offer to exhibit the Basquiats. If Force and Mangin are seeking a payday, and De Groft hopes for a blockbuster exhibition, O’Donnell seems driven by the courtroom-like drama of it all. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.991001546382904}
“I treated these paintings as a client,” the lawyer explained. “I believe I could win this case nine and a half out of ten times with a jury. I’m not bragging. I’m just saying the evidence is compelling.” He cited the various reports done on the paintings, and, like De Groft, the Mumford-penned and Basquiat-signed poem that definitively sealed his case. “That poem is so revealing, and Basquiat’s initials are on it,” he continued. “It’s autobiographical and you can’t make up this stuff, you just can’t.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8953295946121216}
Except that sometimes you can. As early as 1994, seemingly beautifully executed Basquiats later deemed to be well-made fakes — accompanied by bogus letters of provenance — were in circulation. And just this past July the F.B.I. arrested a man in New York City it said was trying to sell artworks he falsely claimed were collaborations between Basquiat and Keith Haring, also complete with forged letters of provenance. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5308730602264404}
O’Donnell had no patience for such comparisons. “You would have to have a big old conspiracy that would rival the Jan. 6 insurrection for these things not to be authentic,” he scoffed, adding that it just didn’t make sense. “A forger who wanted to make big hay over Basquiat would paint one extraordinary Basquiat, or maybe two or three, all large on canvas. He wouldn’t just go out and get cardboard from a supermarket or liquor store and create 25 paintings.”  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9552592039108276}
What of Mumford’s family, who only learned of the museum’s exhibition of “The Thaddeus Mumford Jr. Venice Collection” from this reporter? “It’s all very strange,” said Jeffrey Mumford, Thad’s younger brother, a Guggenheim fellowship-winning classical composer and music professor at Lorain County Community College, near Cleveland. Not only did Thad never once mention to him buying the Basquiats, “he was someone who didn’t really go to art galleries very often, was often intimidated by the idea of going to them because he felt he had to have a degree in art in order to appreciate the work.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9704243540763855}
Moreover, if Thad had ever wanted to discuss a promising new artist, he could have spoken with Jeffrey’s wife, Donna Coleman, an accomplished painter who had lived in New York City at the same time Basquiat was first making a name for himself. Coleman, in an interview, recalled walking in downtown Manhattan in 1978 “when I would see his SAMO graffiti on the wall fresh from the day before.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9624121785163879}
Coleman, who helped settle Thad’s estate upon his death in 2018, said it seemed believable to her that he had simply stopped making payments on his storage unit “because he didn’t care about these works, or he didn’t recognize their worth, or maybe he was tipped off that they were not real.” The last years leading up to his death “were very, very fraught,” she said. His career in television had essentially dried up, he was severely depressed and in poor health, and “he was just letting go of a lot of things.” But if by 2012 he no longer cared about the paintings, then why did he hold onto a poem about that same artist for all those years? “It does seem odd, doesn’t it?” Coleman mused. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9755913019180298}
One clue to the paintings’ authenticity may lie with the cardboard on which Basquiat would have applied his layers of paint, crayon, and oilstick. Mangin said he consulted several paper experts to confirm its age, but was told that the composition of cardboard from the 1980s was impossible to differentiate from that of recent years. “Nobody had an answer,” Mangin explained. “Cardboard is cardboard.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9848771095275879}
Yet flip over one of the works and you’ll find that it was painted on the back of a shipping box with a clearly visible company imprint: “Align top of FedEx Shipping Label here.” According to Lindon Leader, an independent brand expert consulted by The Times, who was shown a photo of the cardboard, the typeface in the imprint was not used by Federal Express before 1994. He should know: that was the year he personally redesigned the company’s logo and its typefaces while working as senior design director at the Landor Associates advertising firm. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8812283873558044}
“It appears to be set in the Univers 67 Bold Condensed,” Leader said of the label’s distinctive purplish font. In 1982, “They were not using Univers at that time.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7877269983291626}
So the piece of cardboard could not have been produced until 12 years after Basquiat supposedly painted on it and six years after the artist’s death. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6858112812042236}
According to a person close to the Orlando museum, who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to reveal internal discussions, its curatorial staff expressed their concern to De Groft that the FedEx text did not seem to be from 1982. “This show raised red flags for them,” the person said, but the director brushed off their concerns. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9774357676506042}
Asked about his staff’s reaction this week, De Groft insisted, “The cardboard is legit.” He added, “I believe deeply these are authentic Basquiats. I can’t answer the question on FedEx, there’s an anomaly there.” But he said the evidence provided by the artworks’ owners — from the Basquiat-signed poem to the Cortez report — was credible. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6551034450531006}
Yet as O’Donnell, the lawyer, has himself argued in a catalog essay for Orlando’s Basquiat exhibition, one small discovery can undermine a seemingly rock solid claim: “Over my four decades in the trenches, cases have been won or lost based on a single piece of evidence.” The key to winning, he concludes, is “finding a ‘smoking gun’ document buried in millions of pages of records. If this sounds like Perry Mason, it is.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3941316306591034}
Asked this week if the FedEx-imprinted cardboard was that veritable “smoking gun,” O’Donnell remained unshaken. “If there’s a question about one painting, it doesn’t cast doubt on all the other ones.” He called the typography question “a subject of expert debate”— one he almost seemed to relish and was confident he would win. “If I presented all this evidence to a jury— including this thing about FedEx — I have no doubt how it would come out.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9469013810157776}

It seems like a story too good to be true, and for some in the art world, it is. Last weekend, 25 Jean-Michel Basquiat paintings were publicly unveiled at the Orlando Museum of Art before several thousand V.I.P.s. All of the paintings were said by the museum to have been created in late 1982 while Basquiat, 22, was living and working out of a studio space beneath Larry Gagosian’s home in Venice, Calif., preparing fresh canvases for a show at the art dealer’s Los Angeles gallery. According to the Orlando museum director and chief executive, Aaron De Groft, the vibrant artworks — layers of mixed media painted and drawn onto slabs of scavenged cardboard ranging in size from a 10-inch square featuring one of the artist’s iconic crowns to a nearly five-foot-high disembodied head — were sold by Basquiat directly to the television screenwriter Thad Mumford. The price? A quick $5,000 in cash — about $14,000 today — paid without Gagosian’s knowledge. The 25 artworks then disappeared for three decades, the museum said, only resurfacing in 2012 after Mumford failed to pay the bill on his Los Angeles storage unit, and its contents — the Basquiats tucked in amid baseball memorabilia and TV industry ephemera — were auctioned off. William Force, a treasure hunting “picker,” and Lee Mangin, his financial backer, who both scour small auctions for mislabeled items, saw photos of the colorful cardboards and eventually snagged the lot — for about $15,000. Mangin provided receipts of the purchase and recounted the thrill of the hunt: “It’s sort of a deep hook that goes inside of you,” he said, likening it to being an art world Indiana Jones digging for lost artifacts. It certainly sounds like a tale straight out of Hollywood, or perhaps a script by the Emmy Award-winning Mumford. Indeed, Gagosian, in a response to this reporter about the 1982 creation of these Basquiats, said he “finds the scenario of the story highly unlikely.” Gagosian’s concerns were echoed by several curators known to write widely on Basquiat’s work, who have greeted the Orlando museum’s show with a stony public silence. De Groft, the OMA director, bristled at such skepticism. “My reputation is at stake as well,” he said in an interview. “And I’ve absolutely no doubt these are Basquiats.” Beyond his own trained eye — he has a Ph.D. in art history from Florida State University — he cited a battery of reports commissioned by the artworks’ current owners. These include a 2017 forensic investigation by the handwriting expert James Blanco which identified the signatures that appear on many of the paintings as being Basquiat’s; a 2017 analysis by the University of Maryland associate professor of art Jordana Moore Saggese, author of “Reading Basquiat: Exploring Ambivalence in American Art,” in which she too attributed the paintings to Basquiat; and signed 2018-19 statements from the late curator Diego Cortez, an early supporter of the artist and founding member of his estate’s now-dissolved authentication committee, which declared each of the paintings to be genuine Basquiats. In light of the imprimatur Cortez’s name carries with historians, his certifications were accompanied by photographs showing the curator mid-signature. Evidence But the foremost proof in De Groft’s mind was a short poem by Mumford in 1982 commemorating the artworks’ creation and the meeting that the owners say occurred between Basquiat, then an artist on the rise, and Mumford, then one of the few Black screenwriters working within network TV and riding high as a producer and writer for the top-rated “M*A*S*H.” Rebuttal Lines from the poem seem to refer both to Mumford’s ’70s work voicing a “Dr. Thad” for “Sesame Street,” his upcoming script for the “M*A*S*H” series finale, the “25 paintings bringing riches,” and the two men’s shared spirit as “no longer outsiders, Industry insiders golden crowns receiving … We film, we write, we film, we paint.” It is said to have been written and typed up by Mumford, then initialed in oilstick by Basquiat (and confirmed as genuine by Blanco). The poem was not in Mumford’s storage locker contents, according to Mangin, but was handed to him by Mumford in 2012. After buying the paintings, Mangin said he and Force tracked down the screenwriter, who told them over lunch how he had bought the Basquiats in 1982 as an investment on the recommendation of a friend. “The poem is almost like a receipt, it refers to the works, it refers to the inscriptions in the works, it refers to the time,” De Groft said. “I’ve absolutely no doubt.” Before his death in 1988 from a drug overdose, Basquiat is believed to have made approximately 2,100 artworks, from small drawings to a paint-adorned refrigerator door, according to the Brooklyn Museum. Could these slices of cardboard have been among them? While it’s certainly difficult to imagine Gagosian, living just one floor above Basquiat and keeping close tabs on his studio progress, or Basquiat’s gallery-employed studio assistant and de facto chauffeur, John Seed, not noticing the creation and sale of 25 detailed paintings on canvas, those painted on cardboard are more easily concealable. Seed has written about driving Basquiat to an appointment with a doctor whose medical bill was paid with drawings. And as noted by Phoebe Hoban in her 1998 biography “Basquiat,” “Anybody with the right attitude and the right amount of money could purchase something from the painter, who was constantly in need of cash to support his various habits.” Gagosian himself conceded to Hoban that his own accounting methods with Basquiat were hardly traditional: “It was the way he chose to be paid, in cash, or in barter, or with clothes, or like he’d say ‘Well, buy my girlfriend a trip to Paris.’” More than just professional reputations now rest on the question of these paintings’ true background. The value of Basquiat’s work has soared: In 2017 one of his paintings sold for $110.5 million at Sotheby’s — the current auction high for an American artwork. If the 25 Mumford-purchased paintings are authenticated as actual Basquiats, Putnam Fine Art and Antique Appraisals puts their total worth at close to $100 million. An official verdict on this whodunit by the Basquiat estate is now impossible — it closed its authentication committee in 2012 in the aftermath of a lawsuit over Basquiat artworks initially deemed fake. (Amid similar time-consuming and expensive litigation, the Andy Warhol estate closed its own authentication committee that same year.) Yet without such a stamp of estate approval, or an established provenance, major auction houses and heavyweight art dealers are reluctant to handle such works. Despite several years of being quietly shopped around the secondary art market, these Basquiats have to date found no takers, according to the owners. The Orlando museum showing could help dispel that market wariness, lending them a new air of institutional legitimacy. Sotheby’s declined to comment on the authenticity of these paintings. Several art world professionals were similarly gun-shy, citing the experience of the estate’s authentication committee and their fear that publicly weighing in could embroil them in a lawsuit with the paintings’ current owners. One dealer who personally worked with Basquiat and saw photographs of the paintings in the Orlando museum said, “the way Basquiat places elements in the composition has an interior logic which is missing in these images.” In addition to Force and Mangin, partial ownership of the artworks now lies with one of Los Angeles’s most prominent trial lawyers, Pierce O’Donnell, famed for successful litigation against a veritable who’s who of the city’s glitterati, from the actor Brad Pitt (on behalf of his ex-wife Angelina Jolie) to the former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling. O’Donnell told The New York Times that he purchased an interest in six of the 25 paintings after Force, who had read about his authentication efforts on behalf of a disputed Jackson Pollock painting, approached him for help with the Basquiats. It was news coverage of this same Pollock legal standoff that also led the OMA’s De Groft to contact O’Donnell and then offer to exhibit the Basquiats. If Force and Mangin are seeking a payday, and De Groft hopes for a blockbuster exhibition, O’Donnell seems driven by the courtroom-like drama of it all. “I treated these paintings as a client,” the lawyer explained. “I believe I could win this case nine and a half out of ten times with a jury. I’m not bragging. I’m just saying the evidence is compelling.” He cited the various reports done on the paintings, and, like De Groft, the Mumford-penned and Basquiat-signed poem that definitively sealed his case. “That poem is so revealing, and Basquiat’s initials are on it,” he continued. “It’s autobiographical and you can’t make up this stuff, you just can’t.” Except that sometimes you can. As early as 1994, seemingly beautifully executed Basquiats later deemed to be well-made fakes — accompanied by bogus letters of provenance — were in circulation. And just this past July the F.B.I. arrested a man in New York City it said was trying to sell artworks he falsely claimed were collaborations between Basquiat and Keith Haring, also complete with forged letters of provenance. O’Donnell had no patience for such comparisons. “You would have to have a big old conspiracy that would rival the Jan. 6 insurrection for these things not to be authentic,” he scoffed, adding that it just didn’t make sense. “A forger who wanted to make big hay over Basquiat would paint one extraordinary Basquiat, or maybe two or three, all large on canvas. He wouldn’t just go out and get cardboard from a supermarket or liquor store and create 25 paintings.” What of Mumford’s family, who only learned of the museum’s exhibition of “The Thaddeus Mumford Jr. Venice Collection” from this reporter? “It’s all very strange,” said Jeffrey Mumford, Thad’s younger brother, a Guggenheim fellowship-winning classical composer and music professor at Lorain County Community College, near Cleveland. Not only did Thad never once mention to him buying the Basquiats, “he was someone who didn’t really go to art galleries very often, was often intimidated by the idea of going to them because he felt he had to have a degree in art in order to appreciate the work.” Moreover, if Thad had ever wanted to discuss a promising new artist, he could have spoken with Jeffrey’s wife, Donna Coleman, an accomplished painter who had lived in New York City at the same time Basquiat was first making a name for himself. Coleman, in an interview, recalled walking in downtown Manhattan in 1978 “when I would see his SAMO graffiti on the wall fresh from the day before.” Coleman, who helped settle Thad’s estate upon his death in 2018, said it seemed believable to her that he had simply stopped making payments on his storage unit “because he didn’t care about these works, or he didn’t recognize their worth, or maybe he was tipped off that they were not real.” The last years leading up to his death “were very, very fraught,” she said. His career in television had essentially dried up, he was severely depressed and in poor health, and “he was just letting go of a lot of things.” But if by 2012 he no longer cared about the paintings, then why did he hold onto a poem about that same artist for all those years? “It does seem odd, doesn’t it?” Coleman mused. One clue to the paintings’ authenticity may lie with the cardboard on which Basquiat would have applied his layers of paint, crayon, and oilstick. Mangin said he consulted several paper experts to confirm its age, but was told that the composition of cardboard from the 1980s was impossible to differentiate from that of recent years. “Nobody had an answer,” Mangin explained. “Cardboard is cardboard.” Yet flip over one of the works and you’ll find that it was painted on the back of a shipping box with a clearly visible company imprint: “Align top of FedEx Shipping Label here.” According to Lindon Leader, an independent brand expert consulted by The Times, who was shown a photo of the cardboard, the typeface in the imprint was not used by Federal Express before 1994. He should know: that was the year he personally redesigned the company’s logo and its typefaces while working as senior design director at the Landor Associates advertising firm. “It appears to be set in the Univers 67 Bold Condensed,” Leader said of the label’s distinctive purplish font. In 1982, “They were not using Univers at that time.” So the piece of cardboard could not have been produced until 12 years after Basquiat supposedly painted on it and six years after the artist’s death. According to a person close to the Orlando museum, who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to reveal internal discussions, its curatorial staff expressed their concern to De Groft that the FedEx text did not seem to be from 1982. “This show raised red flags for them,” the person said, but the director brushed off their concerns. Asked about his staff’s reaction this week, De Groft insisted, “The cardboard is legit.” He added, “I believe deeply these are authentic Basquiats. I can’t answer the question on FedEx, there’s an anomaly there.” But he said the evidence provided by the artworks’ owners — from the Basquiat-signed poem to the Cortez report — was credible. Yet as O’Donnell, the lawyer, has himself argued in a catalog essay for Orlando’s Basquiat exhibition, one small discovery can undermine a seemingly rock solid claim: “Over my four decades in the trenches, cases have been won or lost based on a single piece of evidence.” The key to winning, he concludes, is “finding a ‘smoking gun’ document buried in millions of pages of records. If this sounds like Perry Mason, it is.” Asked this week if the FedEx-imprinted cardboard was that veritable “smoking gun,” O’Donnell remained unshaken. “If there’s a question about one painting, it doesn’t cast doubt on all the other ones.” He called the typography question “a subject of expert debate”— one he almost seemed to relish and was confident he would win. “If I presented all this evidence to a jury— including this thing about FedEx — I have no doubt how it would come out.” Evidence

nytimes\berlin-film-festival-2022.txt

Using custom data configuration default-24ff3082295f57a9
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-24ff3082295f57a9\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-24ff3082295f57a9\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-99fba4d3a047d96a.arrow

BERLIN — What is your strategy during a nasal-swab antigen test? Personally, I look up and to the right as the technician inserts the little wand, either affecting an air of nonchalance or pretending I’ve been struck by a highly original thought. I know others make idle chitchat, and at least one fellow critic has taken to staring deeply into the tester’s eyes. It’s a pandemic: You get your kicks where you can. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8664446473121643}
At the Berlin International Film Festival — which announced its prizewinners on Wednesday but is continuing public screenings through Feb. 20 — attending members of the press have had ample opportunity to hone their swab technique. Mandatory tests every 24 hours — even for the boosted — were part of a package of restrictions that the organizers of the festival, which is known as the Berlinale, agreed to so it could take place as a physical event. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.966467559337616}
There were complaints. But every time someone whinged about the new ticket booking system or became exasperated by the Escher-inspired exit routes, which always seemed to involve multiple uphill flights of stairs, I found myself thinking: “Deal with it.” Or sometimes, less charitably: “Suck it up.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.34204232692718506}
The category error from complainants is to compare this reduced-attendance edition with Before Times Berlinales. The real comparison is with last year’s online version, which debuted a stronger selection of films but didn’t feel like a festival at all. Consider that lonely experience as the alternative and the staircases, seating hassles and swabbing become a small price to pay. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7890348434448242}
And however deep your tester probes, it could hardly be as invasive as the public colonoscopy undergone in Peter Strickland’s willfully outré “Flux Gourmet,” one of the event’s buzzy early titles. Surely the most single-minded evocation of the discomfort of suppressing flatulence ever to get a major festival berth, Strickland’s film was only rivaled by François Ozon’s festival opener “Peter von Kant” for fun, gaudy aesthetics adorning an oddly disposable story. Ozon’s film quite amusingly pulls off its trick of overlaying details from Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s biography onto a gender-flipped reworking of Fassbinder’s 1972 classic “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” without ever actually justifying why. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7913358807563782}
The single-location “Peter von Kant” is one of several Berlinale films that bears the hallmarks of shooting under pandemic conditions. “Fire,” which brought Claire Denis (incredibly) her first best director award at a major film festival, is another. Here, Juliette Binoche plays a woman torn between two lovers (or between “Both Sides of the Blade,” as the film’s more evocative international title puts it). If it falls short of Denis’s highest watermarks, it is at least notable for how it acknowledges the pandemic without making it the subject of the film. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9784438610076904}
Quentin Dupieux’s highly enjoyable “Incredible But True” takes an oblique approach, not referencing coronavirus restrictions directly but creating unmissable parallels in what is essentially a time-travel movie. Witty and unassumingly profound, it’s a marked contrast to Bertrand Bonello’s chaotically indulgent “Coma,” which involves lockdown navel-gazing of a borderline incomprehensible nature. It received a wildly divided reception, represented by the guy beside me leaving in a huff partway in and the guy in front of me leaping to his feet shouting “Bravo!” at the end. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.821042001247406}
Two lower-key Asian titles also unfold in coronavirus times, without being overwhelmed by pandemic paranoia. Hong Sangsoo’s “The Novelist’s Film” is another deceptively breezy slice of life from the Korean director, which brought him — a perennial prize taker at the Berlinale — the runner-up Grand Prix award. The notion that this makes the festival’s jury president, M. Night Shyamalan, a de facto member of “the Hong Hive” is remarkable for anyone acquainted with their respective oeuvres — the kind of thought it’s useful to have strike you when you’re having your nose swabbed and want to look loftily away. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9901236891746521}
The accurately named Japanese gem “Small, Slow But Steady” also featured masks, though here we notice the difficulties they present for lip readers. The beautifully absorbing story of a deaf female boxer whose beloved gym is facing closure, ​​Sho Miyake’s affecting drama is miniature in every way except emotional impact. Its bittersweet main idea, about a treasured place facing its imminent end, is writ in larger, bolder, colors in Carla Simón’s “Alcarràs,” which won the Golden Bear, the festival’s top award. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9510142803192139}
“Alcarràs” follows the windy, sun-blasted fortunes of the Solé family, from the Catalonia region of Spain, during the family peach orchard’s last harvest before demolition. It’s a lovely, chattering, life-filled title featuring irresistible performances from its nonprofessional, all-ages ensemble cast. Its triumph here makes it the third consecutive time, after Cannes and Venice, that a major European festival’s highest honor has gone to a woman for her second film. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7182796597480774}
But for all its sunshine and sad, brave wisdom, “Alcarràs” was, for me, outmatched by a much wintrier competition title. Ulrich Seidl’s “Rimini” is an uncompromising, coldly provocative drama that gathered no prizes, which is a shame. But that its star, Michael Thomas, playing a washed-up club singer in an off-season Italian beach town, was not specifically recognized is more or less a crime. My other competition favorite, Natalia López Gallardo’s formally striking debut feature “Robe of Gems,” did pick up the Jury Prize. But otherwise, as has been the case since the Encounters sidebar was inaugurated in 2020, a lot of the more interesting titles ended up there rather than in the main competition. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5673873424530029}
In particular, Jöns Jönsson’s “Axiom” is a clever examination of the psychology of a compulsive liar. And best of all — in this section, this festival and, for me, this year so far — there’s Cyril Schäublin’s utterly singular “Unrest,” a movie that is defiantly uncategorizable, unless you have a category earmarked “playful, otherworldly tales of watchmaking and anarchism in 1870s Switzerland.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7486115097999573}
“Unrest” was the most transporting movie I saw in Berlin, at least until I physically transported myself to the city’s planetarium to watch Liz Rosenfeld’s experimental “White Sands Crystal Foxes.” The film itself is a rather exasperatingly overwritten art piece, but the experience was little short of transcendent. Lying under a domed 360-degree projection, suspended amid cascading imagery, I felt pleasantly disembodied. Later, it occurred to me how odd it was to yearn for a return to the real world, just to better escape it again. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9676122665405273}
To that end — escapism — the most all-cylinders-firing section of this year’s Berlinale was undoubtedly the terrific retrospective, called “No Angels” and comprising 27 Golden Age Hollywood comedies, each starring Mae West, Rosalind Russell or Carole Lombard. The actresses’ big hits, like “My Little Chickadee,” “His Girl Friday” and “My Man Godfrey” were there, but this blast of a selection also unearthed less well-known but no less delightful titles. “Four’s a Crowd,” starring Russell alongside Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland is one, as is “Lady By Choice,” in which Lombard plays a showgirl-come-good who “adopts” a fake mother as a publicity stunt. Retreating into a screwball-comedy world might just be the best way to massage away the annoyances of the real one. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6910614371299744}
Then again, as the days zipped by and the staircases seemed to just get longer, it became clear that the irritations of real life are an integral part of what we missed so sorely during last year’s remote edition. At one public screening, a couple started arguing loudly with an usher when she told them they must leave an empty seat between them. I was annoyed by them. And then I remembered to be delighted that I could be annoyed by other physical humans being physically annoying in a physical place. “Suck it up,” I wanted to tell them. But also, “I love you.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9440996050834656}

BERLIN — What is your strategy during a nasal-swab antigen test? Personally, I look up and to the right as the technician inserts the little wand, either affecting an air of nonchalance or pretending I’ve been struck by a highly original thought. I know others make idle chitchat, and at least one fellow critic has taken to staring deeply into the tester’s eyes. It’s a pandemic: You get your kicks where you can. At the Berlin International Film Festival — which announced its prizewinners on Wednesday but is continuing public screenings through Feb. 20 — attending members of the press have had ample opportunity to hone their swab technique. Mandatory tests every 24 hours — even for the boosted — were part of a package of restrictions that the organizers of the festival, which is known as the Berlinale, agreed to so it could take place as a physical event. There were complaints. But every time someone whinged about the new ticket booking system or became exasperated by the Escher-inspired exit routes, which always seemed to involve multiple uphill flights of stairs, I found myself thinking: “Deal with it.” Or sometimes, less charitably: “Suck it up.” The category error from complainants is to compare this reduced-attendance edition with Before Times Berlinales. The real comparison is with last year’s online version, which debuted a stronger selection of films but didn’t feel like a festival at all. Consider that lonely experience as the alternative and the staircases, seating hassles and swabbing become a small price to pay. And however deep your tester probes, it could hardly be as invasive as the public colonoscopy undergone in Peter Strickland’s willfully outré “Flux Gourmet,” one of the event’s buzzy early titles. Surely the most single-minded evocation of the discomfort of suppressing flatulence ever to get a major festival berth, Strickland’s film was only rivaled by François Ozon’s festival opener “Peter von Kant” for fun, gaudy aesthetics adorning an oddly disposable story. Ozon’s film quite amusingly pulls off its trick of overlaying details from Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s biography onto a gender-flipped reworking of Fassbinder’s 1972 classic “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” without ever actually justifying why. The single-location “Peter von Kant” is one of several Berlinale films that bears the hallmarks of shooting under pandemic conditions. “Fire,” which brought Claire Denis (incredibly) her first best director award at a major film festival, is another. Here, Juliette Binoche plays a woman torn between two lovers (or between “Both Sides of the Blade,” as the film’s more evocative international title puts it). If it falls short of Denis’s highest watermarks, it is at least notable for how it acknowledges the pandemic without making it the subject of the film. Quentin Dupieux’s highly enjoyable “Incredible But True” takes an oblique approach, not referencing coronavirus restrictions directly but creating unmissable parallels in what is essentially a time-travel movie. Witty and unassumingly profound, it’s a marked contrast to Bertrand Bonello’s chaotically indulgent “Coma,” which involves lockdown navel-gazing of a borderline incomprehensible nature. It received a wildly divided reception, represented by the guy beside me leaving in a huff partway in and the guy in front of me leaping to his feet shouting “Bravo!” at the end. Two lower-key Asian titles also unfold in coronavirus times, without being overwhelmed by pandemic paranoia. Hong Sangsoo’s “The Novelist’s Film” is another deceptively breezy slice of life from the Korean director, which brought him — a perennial prize taker at the Berlinale — the runner-up Grand Prix award. The notion that this makes the festival’s jury president, M. Night Shyamalan, a de facto member of “the Hong Hive” is remarkable for anyone acquainted with their respective oeuvres — the kind of thought it’s useful to have strike you when you’re having your nose swabbed and want to look loftily away. The accurately named Japanese gem “Small, Slow But Steady” also featured masks, though here we notice the difficulties they present for lip readers. The beautifully absorbing story of a deaf female boxer whose beloved gym is facing closure, ​​Sho Miyake’s affecting drama is miniature in every way except emotional impact. Its bittersweet main idea, about a treasured place facing its imminent end, is writ in larger, bolder, colors in Carla Simón’s “Alcarràs,” which won the Golden Bear, the festival’s top award. “Alcarràs” follows the windy, sun-blasted fortunes of the Solé family, from the Catalonia region of Spain, during the family peach orchard’s last harvest before demolition. It’s a lovely, chattering, life-filled title featuring irresistible performances from its nonprofessional, all-ages ensemble cast. Its triumph here makes it the third consecutive time, after Cannes and Venice, that a major European festival’s highest honor has gone to a woman for her second film. But for all its sunshine and sad, brave wisdom, “Alcarràs” was, for me, outmatched by a much wintrier competition title. Ulrich Seidl’s “Rimini” is an uncompromising, coldly provocative drama that gathered no prizes, which is a shame. But that its star, Michael Thomas, playing a washed-up club singer in an off-season Italian beach town, was not specifically recognized is more or less a crime. My other competition favorite, Natalia López Gallardo’s formally striking debut feature “Robe of Gems,” did pick up the Jury Prize. But otherwise, as has been the case since the Encounters sidebar was inaugurated in 2020, a lot of the more interesting titles ended up there rather than in the main competition. In particular, Jöns Jönsson’s “Axiom” is a clever examination of the psychology of a compulsive liar. And best of all — in this section, this festival and, for me, this year so far — there’s Cyril Schäublin’s utterly singular “Unrest,” a movie that is defiantly uncategorizable, unless you have a category earmarked “playful, otherworldly tales of watchmaking and anarchism in 1870s Switzerland.” “Unrest” was the most transporting movie I saw in Berlin, at least until I physically transported myself to the city’s planetarium to watch Liz Rosenfeld’s experimental “White Sands Crystal Foxes.” The film itself is a rather exasperatingly overwritten art piece, but the experience was little short of transcendent. Lying under a domed 360-degree projection, suspended amid cascading imagery, I felt pleasantly disembodied. Later, it occurred to me how odd it was to yearn for a return to the real world, just to better escape it again. To that end — escapism — the most all-cylinders-firing section of this year’s Berlinale was undoubtedly the terrific retrospective, called “No Angels” and comprising 27 Golden Age Hollywood comedies, each starring Mae West, Rosalind Russell or Carole Lombard. The actresses’ big hits, like “My Little Chickadee,” “His Girl Friday” and “My Man Godfrey” were there, but this blast of a selection also unearthed less well-known but no less delightful titles. “Four’s a Crowd,” starring Russell alongside Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland is one, as is “Lady By Choice,” in which Lombard plays a showgirl-come-good who “adopts” a fake mother as a publicity stunt. Retreating into a screwball-comedy world might just be the best way to massage away the annoyances of the real one. Then again, as the days zipped by and the staircases seemed to just get longer, it became clear that the irritations of real life are an integral part of what we missed so sorely during last year’s remote edition. At one public screening, a couple started arguing loudly with an usher when she told them they must leave an empty seat between them. I was annoyed by them. And then I remembered to be delighted that I could be annoyed by other physical humans being physically annoying in a physical place. “Suck it up,” I wanted to tell them. But also, “I love you.” Evidence

nytimes\biden-economy-inflation-growth.txt

Using custom data configuration default-4d9df6efc89dca36
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-4d9df6efc89dca36\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-4d9df6efc89dca36\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-83f9c2be74d17cb9.arrow

Thirteen months into the Biden administration, Democrats face a troubling paradox. By many measures the economy has done very well, hugely outperforming expectations for growth and job creation. A record number of Americans say that it’s a good time to find a quality job. But inflation has spiked, consumer sentiment has plunged, and polls show that economic perceptions are currently a big liability for their party. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.4596618413925171}
How should President Biden talk about this situation? Obviously he needs to acknowledge the inflation problem. But there’s a debate among pundits, and presumably within the party’s inner circles, about how much he should tout his achievements. Some commentators seem to believe that emphasizing the good news would be a mistake, that his best move would be to demonstrate that he’s in touch by acknowledging that things have gone wrong — that he should, in effect, ratify negative narratives about the economy. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.714992880821228}
Well, I remember the 1970s, and if you ask me, pundits calling on Biden to show “humility” seem to be suggesting that he should give a version of Jimmy Carter’s infamous “malaise” speech. {'label': 'Position', 'score': 0.3952346742153168}
Furthermore, if Biden emphasizes the positive he will have reality on his side. I’ve been arguing for a while that the economy is doing much better than either consumer surveys or polling suggest. And two important new studies reinforce that case. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5493227243423462}
The first study, by researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, involves real wages — wages corrected for inflation. I’ve seen many articles simply asserting as fact that wages haven’t kept up with inflation. But is that true? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6619830131530762}
You might think this is a simple question to answer — just compare average wages with the level of prices. But the pandemic has messed up such comparisons by skewing the composition of the work force. In 2020 average wages went up a lot, not because individual workers were getting big raises, but because the millions of Americans laid off were disproportionately in low-paid occupations like restaurant work. Those same occupations have led the recovery in employment over the past year, so that true wage growth has been higher than the average might suggest. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9231558442115784}
The Dallas Fed study, which attempted to correct for these effects, found that real wages actually rose in 2021, although they slipped slightly in the second half of the year. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3590662479400635}
I’m not saying that workers are doing great — they aren’t. Nor should we take this study as the final word; maybe real wages are actually down a bit rather than up a bit. But these estimates are inconsistent with claims that workers have suffered large declines in their purchasing power. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5050498247146606}
And in terms of the politics, it seems worth noting a historical comparison: Real wages for blue-collar workers declined fairly consistently over the course of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, despite the 1985-86 plunge in world oil prices. Yet Republicans won not one but two landslide presidential election victories in the 1980s largely on the strength of perceived economic success. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9401841759681702}
Still, people dislike inflation even when their incomes are keeping up, perhaps because inflation creates a sense that things are out of control. This helps explain the decline in consumer sentiment over the past year, although both The Times’s Nate Cohn and I have found that the decline in confidence is bigger than you would have expected even given inflation aversion. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.4064345061779022}
But there’s more. Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York point out that their bank’s survey of consumers, like other surveys, says that Americans expect high inflation this year but don’t expect it to persist. Furthermore, longer-term expectations of inflation have become less responsive to current price increases than they were in the past — which is the opposite of what you’d expect to see if people really perceived an economy spinning out of control. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.864601194858551}
So Americans aren’t suffering big declines in real wages, and they see inflation as temporary, not a runaway phenomenon. Why, then, hasn’t the good economic news on other fronts made them more upbeat? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.779957115650177}
Maybe because, for whatever reason, they haven’t heard that good news. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7946493625640869}
There are many indicators of a large divergence between what people say about their own situation — which they rate as pretty good, financially and otherwise — and what they say about what’s happening to the nation as a whole. That is, they imagine that others are doing badly even though they themselves are doing OK. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7784790992736816}
Some of this represents immovable partisanship — nothing will convince Republicans that things aren’t terrible. But as Greg Sargent of The Washington Post points out, recent polling finds that when voters are presented with information about the good news on jobs, growth and unemployment, their assessment of the economy — and of Democrats — improves substantially. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.4267902374267578}
So Biden should indeed talk about his successes. He shouldn’t ignore the negatives — although denial of awkward reality has historically worked well for Republicans. But he should tout the good things that have happened on his watch. After all, if he won’t, who will? A good economy won’t sell itself. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.9393945336341858}

Thirteen months into the Biden administration, Democrats face a troubling paradox. By many measures the economy has done very well, hugely outperforming expectations for growth and job creation. A record number of Americans say that it’s a good time to find a quality job. But inflation has spiked, consumer sentiment has plunged, and polls show that economic perceptions are currently a big liability for their party. How should President Biden talk about this situation? Obviously he needs to acknowledge the inflation problem. But there’s a debate among pundits, and presumably within the party’s inner circles, about how much he should tout his achievements. Some commentators seem to believe that emphasizing the good news would be a mistake, that his best move would be to demonstrate that he’s in touch by acknowledging that things have gone wrong — that he should, in effect, ratify negative narratives about the economy. Lead Well, I remember the 1970s, and if you ask me, pundits calling on Biden to show “humility” seem to be suggesting that he should give a version of Jimmy Carter’s infamous “malaise” speech. Position Furthermore, if Biden emphasizes the positive he will have reality on his side. I’ve been arguing for a while that the economy is doing much better than either consumer surveys or polling suggest. And two important new studies reinforce that case. The first study, by researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, involves real wages — wages corrected for inflation. I’ve seen many articles simply asserting as fact that wages haven’t kept up with inflation. But is that true? You might think this is a simple question to answer — just compare average wages with the level of prices. But the pandemic has messed up such comparisons by skewing the composition of the work force. In 2020 average wages went up a lot, not because individual workers were getting big raises, but because the millions of Americans laid off were disproportionately in low-paid occupations like restaurant work. Those same occupations have led the recovery in employment over the past year, so that true wage growth has been higher than the average might suggest. The Dallas Fed study, which attempted to correct for these effects, found that real wages actually rose in 2021, although they slipped slightly in the second half of the year. I’m not saying that workers are doing great — they aren’t. Nor should we take this study as the final word; maybe real wages are actually down a bit rather than up a bit. But these estimates are inconsistent with claims that workers have suffered large declines in their purchasing power. And in terms of the politics, it seems worth noting a historical comparison: Real wages for blue-collar workers declined fairly consistently over the course of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, despite the 1985-86 plunge in world oil prices. Yet Republicans won not one but two landslide presidential election victories in the 1980s largely on the strength of perceived economic success. Evidence Still, people dislike inflation even when their incomes are keeping up, perhaps because inflation creates a sense that things are out of control. This helps explain the decline in consumer sentiment over the past year, although both The Times’s Nate Cohn and I have found that the decline in confidence is bigger than you would have expected even given inflation aversion. Counterclaim But there’s more. Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York point out that their bank’s survey of consumers, like other surveys, says that Americans expect high inflation this year but don’t expect it to persist. Furthermore, longer-term expectations of inflation have become less responsive to current price increases than they were in the past — which is the opposite of what you’d expect to see if people really perceived an economy spinning out of control. Rebuttal So Americans aren’t suffering big declines in real wages, and they see inflation as temporary, not a runaway phenomenon. Why, then, hasn’t the good economic news on other fronts made them more upbeat? Evidence Maybe because, for whatever reason, they haven’t heard that good news. Claim There are many indicators of a large divergence between what people say about their own situation — which they rate as pretty good, financially and otherwise — and what they say about what’s happening to the nation as a whole. That is, they imagine that others are doing badly even though they themselves are doing OK. Evidence Some of this represents immovable partisanship — nothing will convince Republicans that things aren’t terrible. But as Greg Sargent of The Washington Post points out, recent polling finds that when voters are presented with information about the good news on jobs, growth and unemployment, their assessment of the economy — and of Democrats — improves substantially. Rebuttal So Biden should indeed talk about his successes. He shouldn’t ignore the negatives — although denial of awkward reality has historically worked well for Republicans. But he should tout the good things that have happened on his watch. After all, if he won’t, who will? A good economy won’t sell itself. Concluding Statement

nytimes\biden-immigration-public-charge-trump.txt

Using custom data configuration default-b82e802c7777237b
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-b82e802c7777237b\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-b82e802c7777237b\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-30659dc51edca1ed.arrow

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration said on Thursday it would propose a regulation that some say would make it harder for future administrations to restore the Trump-era “public charge” policy that allowed officials to deny permanent residency to immigrants who received or were most likely to need public benefits. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6895141005516052}
Immigration advocates, who have been critical of the progress President Biden has made over the past year in reversing his predecessor’s immigration policies, welcomed the announcement. Even though former President Donald J. Trump’s rule was halted last year, immigrants hoping for green cards have continued to be wary of doing anything that they feared could jeopardize their chances of getting them, including going to the hospital or getting a Covid-19 vaccine. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8453570604324341}
Lingering fears about the Trump rule have made it “much more difficult to address the harms of the pandemic” for immigrants lacking permanent legal status, said Tanya Broder, a lawyer with the National Immigration Law Center. The Trump administration’s rule went into effect in February 2020, just weeks before the reach of the coronavirus in the United States became clear. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9473098516464233}
While the Trump policy has not been in effect for nearly a year, the Biden administration’s new rule would be more resilient to potential legal challenges and harder to reverse by a new administration than the one it issued last March, policy experts said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.31188517808914185}
In U.S. immigration law, the idea of public charges has historically applied to those deemed likely to primarily depend on the federal government for survival, such as through public cash assistance or institutionalized long-term care. Mr. Trump’s rule expanded the definition, changing what had been common practice for 20 years, and was seen by many as a way to keep out poor immigrants. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9422754645347595}
The Trump administration, however, expanded the list of benefits that could make a new immigrant ineligible for permanent residency, adding Medicaid, food stamps and subsidized housing, for example. Researchers have said the policy prompted many families to drop off the benefit rolls, even if they had children who were U.S. citizens and could use such programs with no effect on their immigration applications. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.43186041712760925}
In November 2020, a federal district court ordered the Trump administration to stop enforcing the policy. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5253772139549255}
Last March, the definition reverted back to what it had been before; the new proposal would continue to use the old language. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7569808959960938}
“The 2019 public charge rule was not consistent with our nation’s values,” Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, said in a statement on Thursday. “Under this proposed rule, we will return to the historical understanding of the term ‘public charge’ and individuals will not be penalized for choosing to access the health benefits and other supplemental government services available to them.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8330368995666504}
 The new proposed regulation, which will be open to public comments for 60 days once it is published in the Federal Register, is “more legally defensible,” because it is going through the government’s rule-making process, said Julia Gelatt, a senior policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. It also adds specificity to some of the terms and clauses in an initial 1999 guidance, so less will be left to interpretation, she said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7760686874389648}
The Trump rule spurred so much fear in immigrant communities that some people who were not subject to the public charge regulation started to avoid public benefits all together. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5808954834938049}
Advocates said they hoped the new proposed rule would make immigrants more comfortable applying for public benefits for which they are eligible, which can vary by state. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.8699418306350708}
“The forthcoming public charge rule is particularly significant given the enduring chilling effect we have seen among immigrant communities fearful of accessing benefits to which they are entitled,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the chief executive of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. “Equally important is the outreach the administration will extend to educate impacted communities.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8895456194877625}

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration said on Thursday it would propose a regulation that some say would make it harder for future administrations to restore the Trump-era “public charge” policy that allowed officials to deny permanent residency to immigrants who received or were most likely to need public benefits. Immigration advocates, who have been critical of the progress President Biden has made over the past year in reversing his predecessor’s immigration policies, welcomed the announcement. Even though former President Donald J. Trump’s rule was halted last year, immigrants hoping for green cards have continued to be wary of doing anything that they feared could jeopardize their chances of getting them, including going to the hospital or getting a Covid-19 vaccine. Lingering fears about the Trump rule have made it “much more difficult to address the harms of the pandemic” for immigrants lacking permanent legal status, said Tanya Broder, a lawyer with the National Immigration Law Center. The Trump administration’s rule went into effect in February 2020, just weeks before the reach of the coronavirus in the United States became clear. Evidence While the Trump policy has not been in effect for nearly a year, the Biden administration’s new rule would be more resilient to potential legal challenges and harder to reverse by a new administration than the one it issued last March, policy experts said. Claim In U.S. immigration law, the idea of public charges has historically applied to those deemed likely to primarily depend on the federal government for survival, such as through public cash assistance or institutionalized long-term care. Mr. Trump’s rule expanded the definition, changing what had been common practice for 20 years, and was seen by many as a way to keep out poor immigrants. The Trump administration, however, expanded the list of benefits that could make a new immigrant ineligible for permanent residency, adding Medicaid, food stamps and subsidized housing, for example. Researchers have said the policy prompted many families to drop off the benefit rolls, even if they had children who were U.S. citizens and could use such programs with no effect on their immigration applications. Evidence In November 2020, a federal district court ordered the Trump administration to stop enforcing the policy. Last March, the definition reverted back to what it had been before; the new proposal would continue to use the old language. Claim “The 2019 public charge rule was not consistent with our nation’s values,” Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, said in a statement on Thursday. “Under this proposed rule, we will return to the historical understanding of the term ‘public charge’ and individuals will not be penalized for choosing to access the health benefits and other supplemental government services available to them.” The new proposed regulation, which will be open to public comments for 60 days once it is published in the Federal Register, is “more legally defensible,” because it is going through the government’s rule-making process, said Julia Gelatt, a senior policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. It also adds specificity to some of the terms and clauses in an initial 1999 guidance, so less will be left to interpretation, she said. Evidence The Trump rule spurred so much fear in immigrant communities that some people who were not subject to the public charge regulation started to avoid public benefits all together. Claim Advocates said they hoped the new proposed rule would make immigrants more comfortable applying for public benefits for which they are eligible, which can vary by state. Counterclaim “The forthcoming public charge rule is particularly significant given the enduring chilling effect we have seen among immigrant communities fearful of accessing benefits to which they are entitled,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the chief executive of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. “Equally important is the outreach the administration will extend to educate impacted communities.” Evidence

nytimes\biden-ukraine-russia.txt

Using custom data configuration default-353690eac02a55e7
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-353690eac02a55e7\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-353690eac02a55e7\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-526170a4c1f55025.arrow

WASHINGTON — President Biden said on Friday that the United States has intelligence showing that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has made a final decision to reject diplomatic overtures and invade Ukraine, in what Mr. Biden said would be a “catastrophic and needless war of choice” in Eastern Europe. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9345855116844177}
Speaking from the Roosevelt Room in the White House, Mr. Biden said “we have reason to believe the Russian forces are planning to and intend to attack Ukraine in the coming week, in the coming days,” adding that “we believe that they will target Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, a city of 2.8 million innocent people.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9140444993972778}
Asked whether he thinks that Mr. Putin is still wavering about whether to invade, Mr. Biden said, “I’m convinced he’s made the decision.” Later, he added that his impression of Mr. Putin’s intentions is based on “a significant intelligence capability.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5453293323516846}
Still, Mr. Biden implored Russia to “choose diplomacy.” {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.49406594038009644}
“It is not too late to de-escalate and return to the negotiating table,” Mr. Biden said, referring to planned talks between Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Russia’s foreign minister on Thursday. “If Russia takes military action before that date, it will be clear that they have slammed the door shut on diplomacy.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.952233076095581}
In the hours before Mr. Biden’s late afternoon remarks, Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine called for mass evacuations in two contested regions of the country, claiming, with little evidence, that Ukraine’s military was about to launch a large-scale attack there, an assertion that appeared intended to provoke Russian military intervention. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9204191565513611}
The ominous messaging of the rebels in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk was loudly echoed by Moscow, raising fears that Russia was setting the stage for an imminent invasion that could ignite the biggest conflict in Europe in decades. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9366150498390198}
The call by the Russian-backed separatists for evacuations came as they blamed Ukraine for an array of provocations, including shelling along the front lines between Ukraine and the separatist forces, and an explosion involving an empty car that pro-Moscow news outlets said belonged to the head of the region’s security services. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9762158393859863}
Mr. Biden, who had just concluded a video call with a dozen Western leaders, rejected the claims as lies intended by Mr. Putin to inflame the situation on the ground and provide a pretext for war — something the United States and other European leaders had been warning about for weeks. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.4709145426750183}
He cited the bombing of a Ukrainian kindergarten as a Russia-backed provocation. And he pointed to Russian separatist accusations that Ukraine was planning to launch a major offensive attack as evidence of Russian efforts to justify military action with misinformation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9334365129470825}
“There is simply no evidence to these assertions, and it defies basic logic to believe the Ukrainians would choose this moment, with well over 150,000 troops arrayed on its borders, to escalate a yearlong conflict,” Mr. Biden said. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.5346190929412842}
The president’s comments are the clearest indications of just how close the world may be to the largest conflict in Europe since World War II. He took the highly unusual course of specifically predicting the time frame and parameters of the invasion, despite the risks that he could be proved wrong. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5028170943260193}
“We’re calling out Russia’s plans loudly and repeatedly,” Mr. Biden said. “Not because we want a conflict but because we’re doing everything in our power to remove any reason that Russia may give to justify invading Ukraine and prevent them from moving.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7983446717262268}
The president did not say how the administration knew about Mr. Putin’s decision, but two U.S. officials said the president’s assessment was based in part on new intelligence showing that nearly half of the 150,000 Russian forces have moved out of staging and into combat formation and could launch a full-scale invasion within days. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9125564098358154}
The force includes 120 to 125 battalion tactical groups, up from the mid-80s earlier in the month. And some of the forces are Russian reservists who would make up an occupation force after an invasion, the officials said. The officials asked for anonymity to discuss government assessments. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9841826558113098}
Mr. Biden vowed that the United States and its allies were united behind imposing severe economic sanctions if Russia’s forces cross Ukraine’s borders. He said he also held a call with Democratic and Republican lawmakers who expressed united support for the administration during a visit to Munich for a security conference. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9746407270431519}
In Ukraine, the head of the country’s Ministry of Defense said the claim of an imminent attack by its military was categorically false and intended to inflame tensions. But the ministry issued a stark warning to residents of the contested regions “not to leave their homes and not to use public transport.” It cited “information that Russian special services have mined a number of social infrastructure facilities in Donetsk,” with the aim of “destabilizing the situation” there. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.972236692905426}
The warning reflected how Russia appeared to be pulling out all the stops to pressure the Ukrainians short of sending its troops across the border. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6515329480171204}
The fears of brewing conflict were reinforced as U.S. officials said that as many as 190,000 troops and aligned militias were arrayed in and near Ukraine, a number that includes the separatists. The assessment was delivered in a statement by the U.S. mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which called it “the most significant military mobilization in Europe since the Second World War.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.974891722202301}
Consistent with Russia’s contradictory messaging throughout the crisis, however, Mr. Putin said on Friday that he was prepared for further diplomacy. The announcement of the meeting between Mr. Blinken and the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, calmed jittery markets and suggested that there was still hope for the crisis to be resolved without war. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.5126962661743164}
But Mr. Putin emphasized that Russia would continue to insist on far-reaching demands for “security guarantees” in Eastern Europe that the West has rejected — such as a halt to the eastward expansion of NATO and the pullback of the alliance’s forces from the region. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.7653526663780212}
“We are ready to go on the negotiating track under the condition that all questions will be considered together, without being separated from Russia’s main proposals,” Mr. Putin said in a news conference alongside his close ally President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus, who was visiting Moscow. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8588112592697144}
Friday’s drumbeat of alarms from the separatists about Ukrainian provocations aligned with how Western officials have been warning that a “false flag” incident could be used to start a military conflict. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.74831223487854}
In calling for people in the contested areas to evacuate to Russia, Denis Pushilin, the pro-Moscow leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic, offered a stark version of what might be coming in citing supposed provocations by Ukraine. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7311024069786072}
“Very soon, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky will order the military to go on an offensive, to implement a plan to invade the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics,” he said in a video posted online, offering no evidence. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7590333223342896}
Kyiv firmly denied Moscow’s accusations. And in his remarks Friday, Mr. Biden said there was “no evidence” behind them. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3347277045249939}
Although Moscow insists that it has no plans for an invasion, it has vowed to mount “a tough response” if the United States and its NATO partners do not roll back their presence in Eastern Europe. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4541341960430145}
In a demonstration of strength, Russia plans major drills this weekend that will include the launch of ballistic and cruise missiles, the country’s Defense Ministry said, according to the Interfax news agency. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8572456240653992}
Russia’s drills will test its strategic nuclear forces, which include the land-based launchers, bombers and warships used to deliver nuclear weapons. They will involve the Black Sea Fleet, which has been engaged in large-scale exercises in the region bordering Ukraine. Mr. Putin will preside over them from a “situation center,” the Kremlin said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9916961789131165}
The Defense Ministry said the drills had been planned in advance, and Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, denied that they were intended to raise tensions with the West. But they will come at a critical juncture in the standoff over Ukraine. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9371641874313354}
Near the front in Ukraine, it was possible to hear the blasts from munitions fired by the Ukrainian military and incoming fire from the pro-Russian separatists. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7469472885131836}
A total of 12 houses were damaged by shelling Friday morning, said a local branch of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6155592203140259}
In remarks before Ukraine’s parliament, the country’s defense minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, urged Ukrainians living in the separatist-held territory not to believe Russian propaganda that the Ukrainian government was going to attack them. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7253041863441467}
“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “Ukraine is not your enemy.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.39312347769737244}
An estimated 3.5 million people live in the two breakaway regions, and self-declared republics, and since the war started there, Russia has handed out citizenship to more than 700,000 people living in the Donbas region. In his messaging on Ukraine, Mr. Putin has warned of the plight of ethnic Russians in the country, saying that events in eastern Ukraine “resemble genocide.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9799791574478149}
Highlighting the growing risk of military conflict, Britain announced Friday night that it was following the United States’ lead in evacuating its embassy from Kyiv to the western city of Lviv. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6165778636932373}
With fears running high that Russian troops in Belarus could invade Ukraine from the northern border with Belarus, only 140 miles from the capital, the Ukrainian authorities ordered the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster closed to tourists. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9490373730659485}

WASHINGTON — President Biden said on Friday that the United States has intelligence showing that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has made a final decision to reject diplomatic overtures and invade Ukraine, in what Mr. Biden said would be a “catastrophic and needless war of choice” in Eastern Europe. Speaking from the Roosevelt Room in the White House, Mr. Biden said “we have reason to believe the Russian forces are planning to and intend to attack Ukraine in the coming week, in the coming days,” adding that “we believe that they will target Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, a city of 2.8 million innocent people.” Asked whether he thinks that Mr. Putin is still wavering about whether to invade, Mr. Biden said, “I’m convinced he’s made the decision.” Later, he added that his impression of Mr. Putin’s intentions is based on “a significant intelligence capability.” Evidence Still, Mr. Biden implored Russia to “choose diplomacy.” Counterclaim “It is not too late to de-escalate and return to the negotiating table,” Mr. Biden said, referring to planned talks between Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Russia’s foreign minister on Thursday. “If Russia takes military action before that date, it will be clear that they have slammed the door shut on diplomacy.” In the hours before Mr. Biden’s late afternoon remarks, Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine called for mass evacuations in two contested regions of the country, claiming, with little evidence, that Ukraine’s military was about to launch a large-scale attack there, an assertion that appeared intended to provoke Russian military intervention. The ominous messaging of the rebels in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk was loudly echoed by Moscow, raising fears that Russia was setting the stage for an imminent invasion that could ignite the biggest conflict in Europe in decades. The call by the Russian-backed separatists for evacuations came as they blamed Ukraine for an array of provocations, including shelling along the front lines between Ukraine and the separatist forces, and an explosion involving an empty car that pro-Moscow news outlets said belonged to the head of the region’s security services. Evidence Mr. Biden, who had just concluded a video call with a dozen Western leaders, rejected the claims as lies intended by Mr. Putin to inflame the situation on the ground and provide a pretext for war — something the United States and other European leaders had been warning about for weeks. Rebuttal He cited the bombing of a Ukrainian kindergarten as a Russia-backed provocation. And he pointed to Russian separatist accusations that Ukraine was planning to launch a major offensive attack as evidence of Russian efforts to justify military action with misinformation. Evidence “There is simply no evidence to these assertions, and it defies basic logic to believe the Ukrainians would choose this moment, with well over 150,000 troops arrayed on its borders, to escalate a yearlong conflict,” Mr. Biden said. Rebuttal The president’s comments are the clearest indications of just how close the world may be to the largest conflict in Europe since World War II. He took the highly unusual course of specifically predicting the time frame and parameters of the invasion, despite the risks that he could be proved wrong. “We’re calling out Russia’s plans loudly and repeatedly,” Mr. Biden said. “Not because we want a conflict but because we’re doing everything in our power to remove any reason that Russia may give to justify invading Ukraine and prevent them from moving.” The president did not say how the administration knew about Mr. Putin’s decision, but two U.S. officials said the president’s assessment was based in part on new intelligence showing that nearly half of the 150,000 Russian forces have moved out of staging and into combat formation and could launch a full-scale invasion within days. The force includes 120 to 125 battalion tactical groups, up from the mid-80s earlier in the month. And some of the forces are Russian reservists who would make up an occupation force after an invasion, the officials said. The officials asked for anonymity to discuss government assessments. Mr. Biden vowed that the United States and its allies were united behind imposing severe economic sanctions if Russia’s forces cross Ukraine’s borders. He said he also held a call with Democratic and Republican lawmakers who expressed united support for the administration during a visit to Munich for a security conference. In Ukraine, the head of the country’s Ministry of Defense said the claim of an imminent attack by its military was categorically false and intended to inflame tensions. But the ministry issued a stark warning to residents of the contested regions “not to leave their homes and not to use public transport.” It cited “information that Russian special services have mined a number of social infrastructure facilities in Donetsk,” with the aim of “destabilizing the situation” there. The warning reflected how Russia appeared to be pulling out all the stops to pressure the Ukrainians short of sending its troops across the border. The fears of brewing conflict were reinforced as U.S. officials said that as many as 190,000 troops and aligned militias were arrayed in and near Ukraine, a number that includes the separatists. The assessment was delivered in a statement by the U.S. mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which called it “the most significant military mobilization in Europe since the Second World War.” Evidence Consistent with Russia’s contradictory messaging throughout the crisis, however, Mr. Putin said on Friday that he was prepared for further diplomacy. The announcement of the meeting between Mr. Blinken and the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, calmed jittery markets and suggested that there was still hope for the crisis to be resolved without war. But Mr. Putin emphasized that Russia would continue to insist on far-reaching demands for “security guarantees” in Eastern Europe that the West has rejected — such as a halt to the eastward expansion of NATO and the pullback of the alliance’s forces from the region. Rebuttal “We are ready to go on the negotiating track under the condition that all questions will be considered together, without being separated from Russia’s main proposals,” Mr. Putin said in a news conference alongside his close ally President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus, who was visiting Moscow. Friday’s drumbeat of alarms from the separatists about Ukrainian provocations aligned with how Western officials have been warning that a “false flag” incident could be used to start a military conflict. In calling for people in the contested areas to evacuate to Russia, Denis Pushilin, the pro-Moscow leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic, offered a stark version of what might be coming in citing supposed provocations by Ukraine. “Very soon, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky will order the military to go on an offensive, to implement a plan to invade the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics,” he said in a video posted online, offering no evidence. Kyiv firmly denied Moscow’s accusations. And in his remarks Friday, Mr. Biden said there was “no evidence” behind them. Evidence Although Moscow insists that it has no plans for an invasion, it has vowed to mount “a tough response” if the United States and its NATO partners do not roll back their presence in Eastern Europe. Claim In a demonstration of strength, Russia plans major drills this weekend that will include the launch of ballistic and cruise missiles, the country’s Defense Ministry said, according to the Interfax news agency. Russia’s drills will test its strategic nuclear forces, which include the land-based launchers, bombers and warships used to deliver nuclear weapons. They will involve the Black Sea Fleet, which has been engaged in large-scale exercises in the region bordering Ukraine. Mr. Putin will preside over them from a “situation center,” the Kremlin said. The Defense Ministry said the drills had been planned in advance, and Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, denied that they were intended to raise tensions with the West. But they will come at a critical juncture in the standoff over Ukraine. Near the front in Ukraine, it was possible to hear the blasts from munitions fired by the Ukrainian military and incoming fire from the pro-Russian separatists. A total of 12 houses were damaged by shelling Friday morning, said a local branch of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In remarks before Ukraine’s parliament, the country’s defense minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, urged Ukrainians living in the separatist-held territory not to believe Russian propaganda that the Ukrainian government was going to attack them. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “Ukraine is not your enemy.” An estimated 3.5 million people live in the two breakaway regions, and self-declared republics, and since the war started there, Russia has handed out citizenship to more than 700,000 people living in the Donbas region. In his messaging on Ukraine, Mr. Putin has warned of the plight of ethnic Russians in the country, saying that events in eastern Ukraine “resemble genocide.” Highlighting the growing risk of military conflict, Britain announced Friday night that it was following the United States’ lead in evacuating its embassy from Kyiv to the western city of Lviv. With fears running high that Russian troops in Belarus could invade Ukraine from the northern border with Belarus, only 140 miles from the capital, the Ukrainian authorities ordered the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster closed to tourists. Evidence

nytimes\big-tech-stock-market.txt

Using custom data configuration default-0b9301a59ee07381
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-0b9301a59ee07381\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-0b9301a59ee07381\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-e8584f9a20d1987b.arrow

The stock market has lately soured on the technology industry. Stock prices of many of the largest companies are down this year, some slightly — shares of Apple and Google have fallen more than 6 percent — and some stupendously: Facebook's parent company, Meta, and Netflix have lost about a third of their value since the New Year. Because surging tech stocks drove a big part of the stock market’s rise in 2021, their decline has contributed much to the market’s fall. The S & P 500 is down by about 7 percent in 2022. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9808128476142883}
It’s obvious why investors are spooked. Omicron, inflation, likely interest rate hikes, a possible war in Europe, Canadians acting very un-Canadianly — unpredictable forces have taken hold of the global economy, so it’s not unreasonable to expect trouble ahead for some of the largest companies in the world. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7393566966056824}
But in the last few weeks, as corporations announced their financial performance for the final months of 2021, I’ve found it hard to focus on what might now go wrong for the tech industry. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8736463189125061}
Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft — the four American companies now worth more than a trillion dollars each (actually, Microsoft is above $2 trillion, and Apple nearly $3 trillion) — reported enviable growth in 2021. Even Facebook’s disappointing earnings were relative: The company’s profits grew by 35 percent in 2021, down from nearly 60 percent growth in 2020. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9886559247970581}
So the much bigger story is that after all that has gone right during the pandemic for the largest companies in tech, they now seem poised to expand their reach and influence over the rest of the economy, rather than relinquish it. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.48126986622810364}
Perhaps it’s not very surprising that the largest tech companies did really well during a pandemic that had a lot of us spending lots more time with technology. Yet the scale of their growth is staggering. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.5867016315460205}
As Chaim Gartenberg of The Verge pointed out, Apple’s revenue grew by more than $90 billion in 2021, about a third more than its revenue in 2020 — and this despite a global shortage of computer chips. Amazon’s sales in 2021 were 67 percent larger than in 2019, the year before the pandemic; Google’s 2021 revenue was nearly 60 percent greater than in 2019. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9854377508163452}
I’ve worn down my thesaurus looking for superlatives to underline how gobsmacking these numbers are. These were already among the largest corporations ever to have existed; in 2018, Apple became the first American company to reach a trillion-dollar market valuation. Companies of that size are just not supposed to grow as quickly as they have. For years, pundits have been predicting that tech giants would eventually run up against the so-called “law of large numbers.” Yet Big Tech keeps breaking the law. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9757441282272339}
What’s driving tech giants’ stupefying growth? It’s not just that the pandemic drove a lot more usage of tech. A bigger deal, I think, is that the pandemic illustrated how much room there still is in our lives for adding even more tech — for our screens to become the primary portal through which a handful of companies capture a slice of everything we do. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.728618860244751}
Consider, for instance, Apple’s “services” business — a division that includes, among other things, its App Store, Apple Pay, iCloud and its music and TV subscription plans. Traditionally Apple has made a huge amount of money from selling hardware. But iPhone sales have gone up and down over the past half decade, which makes sense; eventually everyone who wants an iPhone will have an iPhone, and with each new iPhone only slightly better than the last, people will have fewer reasons to upgrade. Indeed, iPhone sales in Apple’s holiday quarter in 2021 grew by 9 percent over 2020 — solid, but nothing like the growth Apple once saw with the iPhone. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9953019618988037}
And so Apple has increasingly turned to subscriptions and other online services for growth — essentially a way to grow not just by selling more iPhones, but by getting more money from each iPhone user. The plan is working spectacularly well. Apple reported that during 2020 its App Store billing and sales revenue grew by 24 percent over the previous year. Luca Maestri, Apple’s finance chief, told investors last month that the company now has 785 million paying subscribers to its various offerings — a number that grew by 165 million in the past year. For some perspective: Netflix has about 222 million subscribers in total. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9929786324501038}
You see a similar trend across the industry — Big Tech’s not just getting more customers for its traditional businesses, but is expanding its ancillary businesses in ways that seem impossible. Amazon, for example, is not just an indomitable retailer and the largest cloud services provider (its Amazon Web Services cloud business now has a $71 billion annual revenue run rate). The company also disclosed that its advertising business generated $31 billion in revenue in 2021, while Microsoft said its ad revenue exceeded $10 billion. Remember that ads are, in the scheme of things, a small part of the business for both companies — Amazon’s $31 billion ad business is not even 10 percent of its annual revenue. And yet it dwarfs companies whose entire business is mainly ads — Snap, for example, which had $4 billion in revenue in 2021, or Pinterest, which sold less than $2.6 billion in ads. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9918153882026672}
Dan Ives and John Katsingris, analysts at the investment firm Wedbush Securities, wrote in a recent report that what we are seeing now is only the beginning of a long-term explosion in tech earnings. They estimated that companies would spend a trillion dollars on cloud services over the coming years, meaning that there is a lot more room for tech companies to keep growing and growing and growing. Apple’s services business alone could be worth $1.5 trillion, Ives has estimated. He and other pundits have called the coming investment boom in tech the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9866411089897156}
That sounds grandiose. And yet it’s hard to see what stands in Big Tech’s way. Lawmakers and regulators have expressed alarm over tech behemoths’ market power, but with the midterm election looming and Republicans and Democrats still at odds over what exactly to do to curb tech giants’ power, the window for new antimonopoly policy might be shrinking. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.48505234718322754}
I wonder if a few years from now we’ll say that when it came to anticipating the future for Big Tech, we weren’t thinking big enough. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.508987545967102}
Farhad wants to chat with readers on the phone. If you’re interested in talking to a New York Times columnist about anything that’s on your mind, please fill out this form. Farhad will select a few readers to call. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.609149694442749}

The stock market has lately soured on the technology industry. Stock prices of many of the largest companies are down this year, some slightly — shares of Apple and Google have fallen more than 6 percent — and some stupendously: Facebook's parent company, Meta, and Netflix have lost about a third of their value since the New Year. Because surging tech stocks drove a big part of the stock market’s rise in 2021, their decline has contributed much to the market’s fall. The S & P 500 is down by about 7 percent in 2022. It’s obvious why investors are spooked. Omicron, inflation, likely interest rate hikes, a possible war in Europe, Canadians acting very un-Canadianly — unpredictable forces have taken hold of the global economy, so it’s not unreasonable to expect trouble ahead for some of the largest companies in the world. Evidence But in the last few weeks, as corporations announced their financial performance for the final months of 2021, I’ve found it hard to focus on what might now go wrong for the tech industry. Rebuttal Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft — the four American companies now worth more than a trillion dollars each (actually, Microsoft is above $2 trillion, and Apple nearly $3 trillion) — reported enviable growth in 2021. Even Facebook’s disappointing earnings were relative: The company’s profits grew by 35 percent in 2021, down from nearly 60 percent growth in 2020. Evidence So the much bigger story is that after all that has gone right during the pandemic for the largest companies in tech, they now seem poised to expand their reach and influence over the rest of the economy, rather than relinquish it. Claim Perhaps it’s not very surprising that the largest tech companies did really well during a pandemic that had a lot of us spending lots more time with technology. Yet the scale of their growth is staggering. Counterclaim As Chaim Gartenberg of The Verge pointed out, Apple’s revenue grew by more than $90 billion in 2021, about a third more than its revenue in 2020 — and this despite a global shortage of computer chips. Amazon’s sales in 2021 were 67 percent larger than in 2019, the year before the pandemic; Google’s 2021 revenue was nearly 60 percent greater than in 2019. I’ve worn down my thesaurus looking for superlatives to underline how gobsmacking these numbers are. These were already among the largest corporations ever to have existed; in 2018, Apple became the first American company to reach a trillion-dollar market valuation. Companies of that size are just not supposed to grow as quickly as they have. For years, pundits have been predicting that tech giants would eventually run up against the so-called “law of large numbers.” Yet Big Tech keeps breaking the law. What’s driving tech giants’ stupefying growth? It’s not just that the pandemic drove a lot more usage of tech. A bigger deal, I think, is that the pandemic illustrated how much room there still is in our lives for adding even more tech — for our screens to become the primary portal through which a handful of companies capture a slice of everything we do. Consider, for instance, Apple’s “services” business — a division that includes, among other things, its App Store, Apple Pay, iCloud and its music and TV subscription plans. Traditionally Apple has made a huge amount of money from selling hardware. But iPhone sales have gone up and down over the past half decade, which makes sense; eventually everyone who wants an iPhone will have an iPhone, and with each new iPhone only slightly better than the last, people will have fewer reasons to upgrade. Indeed, iPhone sales in Apple’s holiday quarter in 2021 grew by 9 percent over 2020 — solid, but nothing like the growth Apple once saw with the iPhone. And so Apple has increasingly turned to subscriptions and other online services for growth — essentially a way to grow not just by selling more iPhones, but by getting more money from each iPhone user. The plan is working spectacularly well. Apple reported that during 2020 its App Store billing and sales revenue grew by 24 percent over the previous year. Luca Maestri, Apple’s finance chief, told investors last month that the company now has 785 million paying subscribers to its various offerings — a number that grew by 165 million in the past year. For some perspective: Netflix has about 222 million subscribers in total. You see a similar trend across the industry — Big Tech’s not just getting more customers for its traditional businesses, but is expanding its ancillary businesses in ways that seem impossible. Amazon, for example, is not just an indomitable retailer and the largest cloud services provider (its Amazon Web Services cloud business now has a $71 billion annual revenue run rate). The company also disclosed that its advertising business generated $31 billion in revenue in 2021, while Microsoft said its ad revenue exceeded $10 billion. Remember that ads are, in the scheme of things, a small part of the business for both companies — Amazon’s $31 billion ad business is not even 10 percent of its annual revenue. And yet it dwarfs companies whose entire business is mainly ads — Snap, for example, which had $4 billion in revenue in 2021, or Pinterest, which sold less than $2.6 billion in ads. Dan Ives and John Katsingris, analysts at the investment firm Wedbush Securities, wrote in a recent report that what we are seeing now is only the beginning of a long-term explosion in tech earnings. They estimated that companies would spend a trillion dollars on cloud services over the coming years, meaning that there is a lot more room for tech companies to keep growing and growing and growing. Apple’s services business alone could be worth $1.5 trillion, Ives has estimated. He and other pundits have called the coming investment boom in tech the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” That sounds grandiose. And yet it’s hard to see what stands in Big Tech’s way. Lawmakers and regulators have expressed alarm over tech behemoths’ market power, but with the midterm election looming and Republicans and Democrats still at odds over what exactly to do to curb tech giants’ power, the window for new antimonopoly policy might be shrinking. Evidence I wonder if a few years from now we’ll say that when it came to anticipating the future for Big Tech, we weren’t thinking big enough. Claim Farhad wants to chat with readers on the phone. If you’re interested in talking to a New York Times columnist about anything that’s on your mind, please fill out this form. Farhad will select a few readers to call. Evidence

nytimes\blinken-russia-ukraine-predictions.txt

Using custom data configuration default-60eefd32def3e286
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-60eefd32def3e286\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-60eefd32def3e286\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-abaf2d330f573dc0.arrow

MUNICH — President Biden and his top aides acknowledge they are risking American credibility as they constantly renew the alarm that Russia is only “several days” away from triggering an unprovoked land war in Europe that could kill tens of thousands of Ukrainians in its opening hours, and plunge the world back into something resembling the Cold War. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8839187622070312}
But Mr. Biden’s aides say they are willing to take that risk. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.6927977800369263}
They would rather be accused of hyperbole and fearmongering than be proven right, they say, if that’s what it takes to deter Russian President Vladimir V. Putin from pursuing an invasion that they worry will not stop at Ukraine’s borders. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7610129117965698}
“If Russia doesn’t invade Ukraine, then we will be relieved that Russia changed course and proved our predictions wrong,’’ Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said at the United Nations Security Council on Thursday morning, in a speech that Mr. Biden had asked him to give only hours before. “That would be a far better outcome than the course we are currently on. And we will gladly accept any criticism that anyone directs at us.’’ {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9620378017425537}
“I am here today not to start a war, but to prevent one,’’ he declared, an oblique reference to Colin L. Powell’s famous but false case, also made to the United Nations, about why the United States and its allies had to disarm Saddam Hussein. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.28171584010124207}
Mr. Biden and Mr. Blinken make no secret of their suspicion that their increasingly desperate-sounding, last-ditch efforts to deter calamity will likely fail. Their pessimism was reinforced Thursday by a series of escalations. Russian-backed forces in the Donbas region appeared responsible for shelling a school, and later claimed they had come under fire from Ukrainian forces, exactly the kind of incident Mr. Blinken warned might be used as a pretext to justify an invasion. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9658548831939697}
Mr. Biden will hold a phone call Friday afternoon with trans-Atlantic leaders about Russia’s buildup of military troops on the border of Ukraine and continued efforts to pursue deterrence and diplomacy. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8760912418365479}
Russia acknowledged on Thursday having expelled the No. 2 diplomat in the American embassy in Moscow, and sent Washington a contradictory-sounding note in which it mocked the claims that it was planning to invade. It said no such action was being planned, and then warned that it would use “measures of a “military-technical character” if the West did not meet its security demands with “legally binding guarantees.” (It is not entirely clear what “military-technical” means to Mr. Putin, but officials in Washington speculate it could encompass everything from cyberweapons to relocating nuclear weapons closer to Western Europe or the United States.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9883736371994019}
While Mr. Biden insisted that “every indication we have is they’re prepared to go into Ukraine,’’ a growing number of diplomats and leaders pouring into Munich for an annual security conference said they thought the best they could hope for was no invasion — but a long siege of Ukraine. Under that scenario, Mr. Putin might do everything short of sending his troops over the border — cyberattacks, assassinations, coup plots, cutting off trade — in hopes of toppling the government without triggering sanctions. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8660091757774353}
“My sense is that he will avoid an overt cross of the border with Russian troops and will aim for options short of that,’’ Douglas Lute, a former deputy national security adviser and former U.S. ambassador to NATO, said Thursday. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6604226231575012}
“He enjoys this position,’’ Mr. Lute said. “Everyone’s paying attention to him, like they haven’t in years. And he feels in control.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6660482287406921}
That is all taking place on the surface. Behind the scenes, Mr. Biden’s aides are searching Mr. Putin’s comments for evidence that he is sensing that he may have overplayed his hand — that his massing of troops has managed to unify the normally fractious 30 nations that make up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7287991046905518}
Mr. Putin has reinvigorated an alliance that spent years confused about its purpose once it lost the adversary it was formed to contain, the Soviet Union. Now, containment is back. And European allies have largely, if reluctantly, lined up behind a sanctions plan that would cut off technology to Russian industry and separate its top banks from the world financial markets. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8632696866989136}
While the Russian leader has worked hard to insulate his economy from the shock of sanctions — the government has a large war chest and little debt — Mr. Putin may well be looking for fissures to exploit without risking his economy. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4873921573162079}
Mr. Biden continued on Thursday to take advantage of the fact that this is the first major geopolitical crisis to play out in a world of open-source intelligence — making it easier to call out Russian deceptions. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.42531120777130127}
Americans do not need the spy-plane photographs that John F. Kennedy showed them in 1962, when he exposed the Soviet missile buildup in Cuba as a way to force Russia’s leader, Nikita S. Khrushchev, into a secret deal. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5987462997436523}
In this case, some of the best evidence is in the unclassified world. On television, news websites and Twitter, satellite photographs from private firms like Maxar help settle the debate about whether Mr. Putin is really sending some forces into retreat or whether, as the Americans claim, he is adding to the more than 150,000 troops that Mr. Biden said were massing on the border, along with tanks and a fearsome array of missiles. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7585816383361816}
So there is no real debate about what is happening on Ukraine’s borders. The firepower is there to see, and that is part of Mr. Putin’s coercion strategy. The only remaining mystery is what Mr. Putin plans to do with them. At first, U.S. officials thought he planned to use them to intimidate Ukraine’s government, force it to abandon its ambitions to join NATO at some undetermined time in the future, and stop its drift toward the West. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.6522883176803589}
Then, after Mr. Putin issued a proposed “treaty’’ in December, it seemed he had a bigger plan: to evict the United States and NATO forces from former Soviet bloc nations that have joined NATO, and roll back the world order created after the Soviet collapse 31 years ago. Two weeks ago, the American assessment changed again: Mr. Putin, intelligence and military officials said, was aiming at Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, after concluding that cyberattacks and subversion alone were unlikely to displace the government. Only a full-scale invasion would do that. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.979961633682251}
So the Biden administration is trying to test Mr. Putin’s bottom line. If the issue can be resolved by negotiating a new arms control pact that addresses Mr. Putin’s concerns about two antimissile emplacements in Poland and Romania, or rules around military exercises held by Russia and NATO, then there is room for deal making, the two men have said. And they have said there is room to renegotiate the Minsk agreement, a set of commitments made by Ukraine and Russia after the annexation of Crimea. Those have been selectively ignored, on both sides. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7896090745925903}
But it seems unlikely to longtime American officials and many of the European diplomats filtering into Munich that Mr. Putin has gone to all this expense and all this effort, and put his legacy on the line, just to paint inside the lines of the existing order. He wants to upturn it. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8935739994049072}
Since Mr. Putin came to power 20 years ago, “Russia has been challenging that system,’’ Angela Stent, a Brookings Institution scholar and the former national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia, wrote recently in Foreign Affairs. “The current crisis is ultimately about Russia redrawing the post-Cold War map and seeking to reassert its influence over half of Europe, based on the claim that it is guaranteeing its own security.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6440642476081848}
That does not mean there is no way out. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.7872887253761292}
In the Cuban missile crisis, the closest the world came to nuclear annihilation during the Cold War, Mr. Khrushchev ultimately took his missiles home, in return for a secret promise — which Mr. Kennedy delivered on months later — to take American Jupiter missiles out of Turkey, where their nuclear warheads were in easy range of the Soviet Union. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9632332921028137}
It is a historical example that has lingered in the background of Situation Room debates about how to negotiate with Mr. Putin, according to two participants, who described the debates on the condition of anonymity. When Mr. Blinken offered in his speech on Thursday to meet his Russian counterpart in Europe next week, and ultimately to put together “a summit of key leaders, in the context of de-escalation, to reach understandings on our mutual security concerns,’’ it was part of the search for a modern-day analogue. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9891172051429749}
Mr. Biden is no stranger to such trade-offs. He is perhaps the last politician still serving in Washington who played a key role in the debates over how to resolve disputes over long-forgotten arms control treaties with the Soviets, called SALT I and SALT II. He has already noted, at a news conference in January, that Ukraine won’t be accepted into NATO for a long while, a signal to Moscow that there was room to deal. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9642860889434814}
And there may be. But by next week, one senior administration official said late Thursday, it may be too late. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4205857813358307}

MUNICH — President Biden and his top aides acknowledge they are risking American credibility as they constantly renew the alarm that Russia is only “several days” away from triggering an unprovoked land war in Europe that could kill tens of thousands of Ukrainians in its opening hours, and plunge the world back into something resembling the Cold War. Evidence But Mr. Biden’s aides say they are willing to take that risk. Rebuttal They would rather be accused of hyperbole and fearmongering than be proven right, they say, if that’s what it takes to deter Russian President Vladimir V. Putin from pursuing an invasion that they worry will not stop at Ukraine’s borders. “If Russia doesn’t invade Ukraine, then we will be relieved that Russia changed course and proved our predictions wrong,’’ Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said at the United Nations Security Council on Thursday morning, in a speech that Mr. Biden had asked him to give only hours before. “That would be a far better outcome than the course we are currently on. And we will gladly accept any criticism that anyone directs at us.’’ “I am here today not to start a war, but to prevent one,’’ he declared, an oblique reference to Colin L. Powell’s famous but false case, also made to the United Nations, about why the United States and its allies had to disarm Saddam Hussein. Mr. Biden and Mr. Blinken make no secret of their suspicion that their increasingly desperate-sounding, last-ditch efforts to deter calamity will likely fail. Their pessimism was reinforced Thursday by a series of escalations. Russian-backed forces in the Donbas region appeared responsible for shelling a school, and later claimed they had come under fire from Ukrainian forces, exactly the kind of incident Mr. Blinken warned might be used as a pretext to justify an invasion. Mr. Biden will hold a phone call Friday afternoon with trans-Atlantic leaders about Russia’s buildup of military troops on the border of Ukraine and continued efforts to pursue deterrence and diplomacy. Russia acknowledged on Thursday having expelled the No. 2 diplomat in the American embassy in Moscow, and sent Washington a contradictory-sounding note in which it mocked the claims that it was planning to invade. It said no such action was being planned, and then warned that it would use “measures of a “military-technical character” if the West did not meet its security demands with “legally binding guarantees.” (It is not entirely clear what “military-technical” means to Mr. Putin, but officials in Washington speculate it could encompass everything from cyberweapons to relocating nuclear weapons closer to Western Europe or the United States.) While Mr. Biden insisted that “every indication we have is they’re prepared to go into Ukraine,’’ a growing number of diplomats and leaders pouring into Munich for an annual security conference said they thought the best they could hope for was no invasion — but a long siege of Ukraine. Under that scenario, Mr. Putin might do everything short of sending his troops over the border — cyberattacks, assassinations, coup plots, cutting off trade — in hopes of toppling the government without triggering sanctions. “My sense is that he will avoid an overt cross of the border with Russian troops and will aim for options short of that,’’ Douglas Lute, a former deputy national security adviser and former U.S. ambassador to NATO, said Thursday. “He enjoys this position,’’ Mr. Lute said. “Everyone’s paying attention to him, like they haven’t in years. And he feels in control.” That is all taking place on the surface. Behind the scenes, Mr. Biden’s aides are searching Mr. Putin’s comments for evidence that he is sensing that he may have overplayed his hand — that his massing of troops has managed to unify the normally fractious 30 nations that make up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Mr. Putin has reinvigorated an alliance that spent years confused about its purpose once it lost the adversary it was formed to contain, the Soviet Union. Now, containment is back. And European allies have largely, if reluctantly, lined up behind a sanctions plan that would cut off technology to Russian industry and separate its top banks from the world financial markets. While the Russian leader has worked hard to insulate his economy from the shock of sanctions — the government has a large war chest and little debt — Mr. Putin may well be looking for fissures to exploit without risking his economy. Mr. Biden continued on Thursday to take advantage of the fact that this is the first major geopolitical crisis to play out in a world of open-source intelligence — making it easier to call out Russian deceptions. Americans do not need the spy-plane photographs that John F. Kennedy showed them in 1962, when he exposed the Soviet missile buildup in Cuba as a way to force Russia’s leader, Nikita S. Khrushchev, into a secret deal. In this case, some of the best evidence is in the unclassified world. On television, news websites and Twitter, satellite photographs from private firms like Maxar help settle the debate about whether Mr. Putin is really sending some forces into retreat or whether, as the Americans claim, he is adding to the more than 150,000 troops that Mr. Biden said were massing on the border, along with tanks and a fearsome array of missiles. Evidence So there is no real debate about what is happening on Ukraine’s borders. The firepower is there to see, and that is part of Mr. Putin’s coercion strategy. The only remaining mystery is what Mr. Putin plans to do with them. At first, U.S. officials thought he planned to use them to intimidate Ukraine’s government, force it to abandon its ambitions to join NATO at some undetermined time in the future, and stop its drift toward the West. Concluding Statement Then, after Mr. Putin issued a proposed “treaty’’ in December, it seemed he had a bigger plan: to evict the United States and NATO forces from former Soviet bloc nations that have joined NATO, and roll back the world order created after the Soviet collapse 31 years ago. Two weeks ago, the American assessment changed again: Mr. Putin, intelligence and military officials said, was aiming at Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, after concluding that cyberattacks and subversion alone were unlikely to displace the government. Only a full-scale invasion would do that. So the Biden administration is trying to test Mr. Putin’s bottom line. If the issue can be resolved by negotiating a new arms control pact that addresses Mr. Putin’s concerns about two antimissile emplacements in Poland and Romania, or rules around military exercises held by Russia and NATO, then there is room for deal making, the two men have said. And they have said there is room to renegotiate the Minsk agreement, a set of commitments made by Ukraine and Russia after the annexation of Crimea. Those have been selectively ignored, on both sides. Evidence But it seems unlikely to longtime American officials and many of the European diplomats filtering into Munich that Mr. Putin has gone to all this expense and all this effort, and put his legacy on the line, just to paint inside the lines of the existing order. He wants to upturn it. Rebuttal Since Mr. Putin came to power 20 years ago, “Russia has been challenging that system,’’ Angela Stent, a Brookings Institution scholar and the former national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia, wrote recently in Foreign Affairs. “The current crisis is ultimately about Russia redrawing the post-Cold War map and seeking to reassert its influence over half of Europe, based on the claim that it is guaranteeing its own security.” Evidence That does not mean there is no way out. Rebuttal In the Cuban missile crisis, the closest the world came to nuclear annihilation during the Cold War, Mr. Khrushchev ultimately took his missiles home, in return for a secret promise — which Mr. Kennedy delivered on months later — to take American Jupiter missiles out of Turkey, where their nuclear warheads were in easy range of the Soviet Union. It is a historical example that has lingered in the background of Situation Room debates about how to negotiate with Mr. Putin, according to two participants, who described the debates on the condition of anonymity. When Mr. Blinken offered in his speech on Thursday to meet his Russian counterpart in Europe next week, and ultimately to put together “a summit of key leaders, in the context of de-escalation, to reach understandings on our mutual security concerns,’’ it was part of the search for a modern-day analogue. Mr. Biden is no stranger to such trade-offs. He is perhaps the last politician still serving in Washington who played a key role in the debates over how to resolve disputes over long-forgotten arms control treaties with the Soviets, called SALT I and SALT II. He has already noted, at a news conference in January, that Ukraine won’t be accepted into NATO for a long while, a signal to Moscow that there was room to deal. And there may be. But by next week, one senior administration official said late Thursday, it may be too late. Evidence

nytimes\bucket-list-travel.txt

Using custom data configuration default-b53897dfecc23831
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-b53897dfecc23831\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-b53897dfecc23831\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-5887ba08893bc7ac.arrow

As Omicron wanes in the United States, hopes are reviving for a brighter year in travel. But the new variant has also substantially altered the landscape.  {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.32275715470314026}
Our reporters explored some of the biggest travel trends to expect this year. Cities are back. Edu-vacations are a thing. And sexual wellness travel is on the rise.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7460879683494568}
Experts say that travelers are ready to “go big” in 2022 with bucket-list trips to far-flung destinations, after nearly two years of stagnation.  {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.6380918025970459}
We want to hear from you: What’s in store for you and travel this year? Will you be going all out, or laying low? {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.8277378082275391}
You can let us know by filling out this form below. We may include your response in an upcoming Travel Dispatch newsletter. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6823993921279907}

As Omicron wanes in the United States, hopes are reviving for a brighter year in travel. But the new variant has also substantially altered the landscape. Claim Our reporters explored some of the biggest travel trends to expect this year. Cities are back. Edu-vacations are a thing. And sexual wellness travel is on the rise. Evidence Experts say that travelers are ready to “go big” in 2022 with bucket-list trips to far-flung destinations, after nearly two years of stagnation. Counterclaim We want to hear from you: What’s in store for you and travel this year? Will you be going all out, or laying low? Lead You can let us know by filling out this form below. We may include your response in an upcoming Travel Dispatch newsletter. Evidence

nytimes\burnout-work-stress.txt

Using custom data configuration default-f75ca7c46ae59c9d
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-f75ca7c46ae59c9d\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-f75ca7c46ae59c9d\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-c203e3fcfcf3ecc3.arrow

Dr. Jessi Gold, a psychiatrist at Washington University in St. Louis, knows she’s edging toward burnout when she wakes up, feels instantly angry at her email inbox and doesn’t want to get out of bed. It’s perhaps not surprising that a mental health professional who is trying to stem the rising tide of burnout could burn out sometimes, too. After all, the phenomenon has practically become ubiquitous in our culture. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.882779061794281}
In a 2021 survey of 1,500 U.S. workers, more than half said they were feeling burned out as a result of their job demands, and a whopping 4.3 million Americans quit their jobs in December in what has come to be known as the “great resignation.” When people think of burnout, mental and emotional symptoms such as feelings of helplessness and cynicism often come to mind. But burnout can lead to physical symptoms as well, and experts say it can be wise to look out for the signs and take steps when you notice them. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9631801843643188}
Burnout, as it is defined, is not a medical condition — it’s “a manifestation of chronic unmitigated stress,” explained Dr. Lotte Dyrbye, a physician scientist who studies burnout at the Mayo Clinic. The World Health Organization describes burnout as a workplace phenomenon characterized by feelings of exhaustion, cynicism and reduced efficacy. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9526765942573547}
“You start not functioning as well, you’re missing deadlines, you’re frustrated, you’re maybe irritable with your colleagues,” said Jeanette M. Bennett, a researcher who studies the effects of stress on health at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7583631873130798}
But stress can have wear and tear effects on the body, especially when it doesn’t ease up after a while — so it makes sense that it can incite physical symptoms, too, Dr. Bennett said. When people are under stress, their bodies undergo changes that include making higher than normal levels of stress hormones such as cortisol, adrenaline, epinephrine and norepinephrine. These changes are helpful in the short term — they give us the energy to power through difficult situations — but over time, they start harming the body. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.5756803750991821}
Our bodies were “not designed for the kinds of stressors that we face today,” said Christina Maslach, a social psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who has spent her career studying burnout. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4667016863822937}
Here’s how to recognize burnout in your body and what to do about it. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8529661893844604}
One common burnout symptom is insomnia, Dr. Dyrbye said. When researchers in Italy surveyed frontline health care workers with burnout during the first peak of the pandemic, they found that 55 percent reported having difficulty falling asleep, while nearly 40 percent had nightmares. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8623833656311035}
Research suggests that chronic stress interferes with the complicated neurological and hormonal system that regulates sleep. It’s a vicious cycle, because not sleeping throws this system even more out of whack. If you’ve noticed you’re unable to sleep at night, that could be a sign that you’re experiencing burnout, Dr. Dyrbye said — and your sleeplessness could exacerbate the problem. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.980728805065155}
Physical exhaustion is another common sign. Dr. Gold said that one of her key symptoms of burnout was fatigue. “I realized I was sleeping every day after work — and I was like, ‘What is wrong with me?’ but it was actually burnout,” she said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9171519875526428}
Changes in eating habits — either eating more or less than usual — can also be a sign of burnout: In the study of Italian health care workers, 56 percent reported changes in food habits. People might eat less because they’re too busy or distracted, or they might find themselves craving “those comfort foods that we all like to go to when we need something to make us feel better,” Dr. Bennett said. Research suggests, too, that stress hormones can affect appetite, making people feel less hungry than usual when they’re under a lot of stress, and more hungry than usual when that stress alleviates. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9897149205207825}
Headaches and stomachaches can also be incited by burnout, Dr. Gold said. One study of people in Sweden suffering from exhaustion disorder — a medical condition similar to burnout — found that 67 percent reported experiencing nausea, gas or indigestion, and that 65 percent had headaches. It’s also important to note that burnout can develop alongside depression or anxiety, both of which can cause physical symptoms. Depression can cause muscle aches, stomachaches, sleep issues and appetite changes. Anxiety is linked to headaches, nausea and shortness of breath. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9937521815299988}
If you’re experiencing physical symptoms that could be indicative of burnout, consider seeing your primary care doctor or a mental health professional to determine whether they are driven by stress or rooted in other physical conditions, Dr. Dyrbye said. Don’t just ignore the symptoms and assume they don’t matter. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8881696462631226}
“It’s really easy to blow off your own symptoms, especially in our culture, where we’re taught to work hard,” Dr. Gold said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4524225890636444}
If it is burnout, then the best solution is to address the root of the problem. Burnout is typically recognized when it is job-driven, but chronic stress can have a variety of causes — financial problems, relationship woes, and caregiving burdens, among other things. Think about “the pebbles in your shoe all the time that you have to deal with,” Dr. Maslach said, and brainstorm ways to remove some of them, at least some of the time. Perhaps you can ask your partner to help more with your toddler’s bedtime routine, or get take-out when you’re especially busy so you don’t have to plan dinner, too. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8684491515159607}
Despite popular culture coverage of the issue, burnout can’t be “fixed” with better self care, Dr. Maslach said — in fact, this implication only worsens the problem, because it lays the blame and responsibility on those with burnout and implies that they should do more to feel better, which is not the case, she said. However, some lifestyle choices can make burnout less likely. Social support, for instance, can help, Dr. Gold said. This could include talking to a therapist or meeting with friends (even if over Zoom). It may also help to take advantage of mental health or exercise benefits offered by your employer. Sleeping more can help too — so if you’re suffering from insomnia, talk to a doctor about possible treatments, Dr. Bennett suggested. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9417110681533813}
When burnout stems from job-related woes, it may help to request better working conditions. Dr. Maslach suggested brainstorming with co-workers and presenting your employer with ideas that would help — like providing quiet areas for breaks and personal phone calls, creating “no meeting” days so that employees can have more time to focus, or ensuring that there’s always coffee in the break room. Even small changes like these can make a dent in the risk for burnout if they fix a problem people face at work every day. “It’s the chronic job stressors that drive people really nuts after a while — they don’t have the right equipment, they don’t have the things they need, they don’t have enough people to do the work,” Dr. Maslach said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.974457859992981}
Taking time off work could also help, but it’s likely only a temporary Band-Aid, Dr. Gold said. She compares it to using a bucket to empty water out of a sinking ship. “It’s still sinking, right? You have to do more than just occasionally take the water out,” she said. Still, it is important to take time off regularly, Dr. Dyrbye said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9643130898475647}
Ultimately, you want to ensure you have some freedom and autonomy in your job, Dr. Gold said. “Anything you can do to regain an element of control can be really helpful,” she said. That could mean doing your least favorite work activity right before your break, so you have something to look forward to during the task and time to recover from it afterward. Or it could be trading a dreaded task with a co-worker and, in return, picking up their most hated task, which might not be so difficult for you. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.9446531534194946}
Finally, while you may not want to add more to your plate, try to make a bit of time each day for something you love, Dr. Dyrbye said. Her work has found that surgeons who make time for hobbies and recreation — even just 15 to 20 minutes a day — are less likely to experience burnout than surgeons who don’t. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7567983269691467}
“You have to have something outside of work that helps you de-stress, that helps you focus and helps you relax,” she said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.45927542448043823}

Dr. Jessi Gold, a psychiatrist at Washington University in St. Louis, knows she’s edging toward burnout when she wakes up, feels instantly angry at her email inbox and doesn’t want to get out of bed. It’s perhaps not surprising that a mental health professional who is trying to stem the rising tide of burnout could burn out sometimes, too. After all, the phenomenon has practically become ubiquitous in our culture. In a 2021 survey of 1,500 U.S. workers, more than half said they were feeling burned out as a result of their job demands, and a whopping 4.3 million Americans quit their jobs in December in what has come to be known as the “great resignation.” When people think of burnout, mental and emotional symptoms such as feelings of helplessness and cynicism often come to mind. But burnout can lead to physical symptoms as well, and experts say it can be wise to look out for the signs and take steps when you notice them. Burnout, as it is defined, is not a medical condition — it’s “a manifestation of chronic unmitigated stress,” explained Dr. Lotte Dyrbye, a physician scientist who studies burnout at the Mayo Clinic. The World Health Organization describes burnout as a workplace phenomenon characterized by feelings of exhaustion, cynicism and reduced efficacy. “You start not functioning as well, you’re missing deadlines, you’re frustrated, you’re maybe irritable with your colleagues,” said Jeanette M. Bennett, a researcher who studies the effects of stress on health at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Evidence But stress can have wear and tear effects on the body, especially when it doesn’t ease up after a while — so it makes sense that it can incite physical symptoms, too, Dr. Bennett said. When people are under stress, their bodies undergo changes that include making higher than normal levels of stress hormones such as cortisol, adrenaline, epinephrine and norepinephrine. These changes are helpful in the short term — they give us the energy to power through difficult situations — but over time, they start harming the body. Rebuttal Our bodies were “not designed for the kinds of stressors that we face today,” said Christina Maslach, a social psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who has spent her career studying burnout. Here’s how to recognize burnout in your body and what to do about it. Claim One common burnout symptom is insomnia, Dr. Dyrbye said. When researchers in Italy surveyed frontline health care workers with burnout during the first peak of the pandemic, they found that 55 percent reported having difficulty falling asleep, while nearly 40 percent had nightmares. Research suggests that chronic stress interferes with the complicated neurological and hormonal system that regulates sleep. It’s a vicious cycle, because not sleeping throws this system even more out of whack. If you’ve noticed you’re unable to sleep at night, that could be a sign that you’re experiencing burnout, Dr. Dyrbye said — and your sleeplessness could exacerbate the problem. Physical exhaustion is another common sign. Dr. Gold said that one of her key symptoms of burnout was fatigue. “I realized I was sleeping every day after work — and I was like, ‘What is wrong with me?’ but it was actually burnout,” she said. Changes in eating habits — either eating more or less than usual — can also be a sign of burnout: In the study of Italian health care workers, 56 percent reported changes in food habits. People might eat less because they’re too busy or distracted, or they might find themselves craving “those comfort foods that we all like to go to when we need something to make us feel better,” Dr. Bennett said. Research suggests, too, that stress hormones can affect appetite, making people feel less hungry than usual when they’re under a lot of stress, and more hungry than usual when that stress alleviates. Headaches and stomachaches can also be incited by burnout, Dr. Gold said. One study of people in Sweden suffering from exhaustion disorder — a medical condition similar to burnout — found that 67 percent reported experiencing nausea, gas or indigestion, and that 65 percent had headaches. It’s also important to note that burnout can develop alongside depression or anxiety, both of which can cause physical symptoms. Depression can cause muscle aches, stomachaches, sleep issues and appetite changes. Anxiety is linked to headaches, nausea and shortness of breath. If you’re experiencing physical symptoms that could be indicative of burnout, consider seeing your primary care doctor or a mental health professional to determine whether they are driven by stress or rooted in other physical conditions, Dr. Dyrbye said. Don’t just ignore the symptoms and assume they don’t matter. Evidence “It’s really easy to blow off your own symptoms, especially in our culture, where we’re taught to work hard,” Dr. Gold said. Claim If it is burnout, then the best solution is to address the root of the problem. Burnout is typically recognized when it is job-driven, but chronic stress can have a variety of causes — financial problems, relationship woes, and caregiving burdens, among other things. Think about “the pebbles in your shoe all the time that you have to deal with,” Dr. Maslach said, and brainstorm ways to remove some of them, at least some of the time. Perhaps you can ask your partner to help more with your toddler’s bedtime routine, or get take-out when you’re especially busy so you don’t have to plan dinner, too. Despite popular culture coverage of the issue, burnout can’t be “fixed” with better self care, Dr. Maslach said — in fact, this implication only worsens the problem, because it lays the blame and responsibility on those with burnout and implies that they should do more to feel better, which is not the case, she said. However, some lifestyle choices can make burnout less likely. Social support, for instance, can help, Dr. Gold said. This could include talking to a therapist or meeting with friends (even if over Zoom). It may also help to take advantage of mental health or exercise benefits offered by your employer. Sleeping more can help too — so if you’re suffering from insomnia, talk to a doctor about possible treatments, Dr. Bennett suggested. When burnout stems from job-related woes, it may help to request better working conditions. Dr. Maslach suggested brainstorming with co-workers and presenting your employer with ideas that would help — like providing quiet areas for breaks and personal phone calls, creating “no meeting” days so that employees can have more time to focus, or ensuring that there’s always coffee in the break room. Even small changes like these can make a dent in the risk for burnout if they fix a problem people face at work every day. “It’s the chronic job stressors that drive people really nuts after a while — they don’t have the right equipment, they don’t have the things they need, they don’t have enough people to do the work,” Dr. Maslach said. Taking time off work could also help, but it’s likely only a temporary Band-Aid, Dr. Gold said. She compares it to using a bucket to empty water out of a sinking ship. “It’s still sinking, right? You have to do more than just occasionally take the water out,” she said. Still, it is important to take time off regularly, Dr. Dyrbye said. Evidence Ultimately, you want to ensure you have some freedom and autonomy in your job, Dr. Gold said. “Anything you can do to regain an element of control can be really helpful,” she said. That could mean doing your least favorite work activity right before your break, so you have something to look forward to during the task and time to recover from it afterward. Or it could be trading a dreaded task with a co-worker and, in return, picking up their most hated task, which might not be so difficult for you. Concluding Statement Finally, while you may not want to add more to your plate, try to make a bit of time each day for something you love, Dr. Dyrbye said. Her work has found that surgeons who make time for hobbies and recreation — even just 15 to 20 minutes a day — are less likely to experience burnout than surgeons who don’t. “You have to have something outside of work that helps you de-stress, that helps you focus and helps you relax,” she said. Evidence

nytimes\california-state-chancellor-resigns.txt

Using custom data configuration default-2723789a9039caf1
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-2723789a9039caf1\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-2723789a9039caf1\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-3787125e270bfe2c.arrow

The head of the California State University system, the largest four-year higher education system in the country, announced on Thursday that he was resigning, effective immediately. The chancellor, Joseph I. Castro, 55, did not give a specific reason for the decision, which came amid allegations that he had mishandled sexual harassment complaints against an administrator while he was the president of Fresno State University. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.7538387179374695}
“I have been honored to serve the California State University for more than eight years, including as its eighth chancellor, and the decision to resign is the most difficult of my professional life,” Dr. Castro said in a statement. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4901183545589447}
“While I disagree with many aspects of recent media reports and the ensuing commentary, it has become clear to me that resigning at this time is necessary so that the C.S.U. can maintain its focus squarely on its educational mission and the impactful work yet to be done,” he added. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.36347442865371704}
Dr. Castro appeared to be referring to a USA Today investigation published on Feb. 3 that said he had repeatedly declined to discipline Frank R. Lamas, a former vice president for student affairs at Fresno State, despite complaints against him over six years involving sexual harassment, bullying and retaliation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.898711085319519}
USA Today reported that Dr. Castro knew of at least seven complaints, but that he nonetheless gave Dr. Lamas raises and positive performance evaluations and endorsed him for a lifetime achievement award. The report said Dr. Lamas reached a $260,000 settlement with the university that prohibited him from ever working in the C.S.U. system. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9239442348480225}
On Feb. 3, C.S.U. released a statement quoting Dr. Castro as saying that he took the allegations seriously and apologized “to anyone in the Fresno State community who was impacted by Dr. Lamas’s behavior.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8598538637161255}
“Within four days of having a complaint that could be formally investigated, Dr. Lamas was removed from campus and never returned,” he said. He added in that statement that “we faced a series of administrative hurdles in making a change until we had a formal complaint that could be investigated.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8745049238204956}
The university said in an email on Friday that Dr. Castro would not be speaking to the media. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4867500066757202}
On Friday, Dr. Lamas said in an emailed statement that there had been “anonymous” and “malicious and untrue allegations” against him after he started working at Fresno State in 2014, and that he left the university in 2019, agreeing to mediation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8488894701004028}
“I continue to maintain my innocence,” he said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4215790629386902}
The California State University board of trustees said on Thursday that it first learned in early February of the concerns about Dr. Castro’s response to allegations involving Dr. Lamas. The board “immediately began reviewing the matter,” and four days after the USA Today report, it announced that it would hold a closed session on Feb. 17. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9487724900245667}
That day, Dr. Castro announced that he would resign. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5437723994255066}
Dr. Castro was appointed the chancellor in September 2020 after serving as the president of the system’s Fresno campus since 2013. He was the first California native and the first Mexican American to be appointed to oversee the university. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5978450179100037}
He told The New York Times in an interview after his appointment that he thought C.S.U. was “the most important institution in the United States because of the students that we serve,” who are “from all different backgrounds.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3852183222770691}
Education advocates and other leaders had said his perspective would reflect those of the students, of whom 43 percent identified as Hispanic or Latinx. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.42908015847206116}
In his resignation statement, Dr. Castro said: “As I know from my own lived experience, our state’s and nation’s diverse and talented young people — especially low-income and first-generation students — deserve access to the transformative power of higher education that so often can seem like an elusive dream.” {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.32463568449020386}
The board said that it was developing a plan to replace Dr. Castro, but that the executive vice chancellor, Steve Relyea, would serve until an interim chancellor could be named for the system, which encompasses 23 campuses, 477,000 students, and 56,000 faculty and staff members. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7482070326805115}
It said the trustees intended to pursue steps for a systemwide Title IX assessment, which prohibits sex discrimination in education programs that receive government funding. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5170799493789673}

The head of the California State University system, the largest four-year higher education system in the country, announced on Thursday that he was resigning, effective immediately. The chancellor, Joseph I. Castro, 55, did not give a specific reason for the decision, which came amid allegations that he had mishandled sexual harassment complaints against an administrator while he was the president of Fresno State University. Lead “I have been honored to serve the California State University for more than eight years, including as its eighth chancellor, and the decision to resign is the most difficult of my professional life,” Dr. Castro said in a statement. Evidence “While I disagree with many aspects of recent media reports and the ensuing commentary, it has become clear to me that resigning at this time is necessary so that the C.S.U. can maintain its focus squarely on its educational mission and the impactful work yet to be done,” he added. Concluding Statement Dr. Castro appeared to be referring to a USA Today investigation published on Feb. 3 that said he had repeatedly declined to discipline Frank R. Lamas, a former vice president for student affairs at Fresno State, despite complaints against him over six years involving sexual harassment, bullying and retaliation. USA Today reported that Dr. Castro knew of at least seven complaints, but that he nonetheless gave Dr. Lamas raises and positive performance evaluations and endorsed him for a lifetime achievement award. The report said Dr. Lamas reached a $260,000 settlement with the university that prohibited him from ever working in the C.S.U. system. On Feb. 3, C.S.U. released a statement quoting Dr. Castro as saying that he took the allegations seriously and apologized “to anyone in the Fresno State community who was impacted by Dr. Lamas’s behavior.” “Within four days of having a complaint that could be formally investigated, Dr. Lamas was removed from campus and never returned,” he said. He added in that statement that “we faced a series of administrative hurdles in making a change until we had a formal complaint that could be investigated.” Evidence The university said in an email on Friday that Dr. Castro would not be speaking to the media. Claim On Friday, Dr. Lamas said in an emailed statement that there had been “anonymous” and “malicious and untrue allegations” against him after he started working at Fresno State in 2014, and that he left the university in 2019, agreeing to mediation. Evidence “I continue to maintain my innocence,” he said. Claim The California State University board of trustees said on Thursday that it first learned in early February of the concerns about Dr. Castro’s response to allegations involving Dr. Lamas. The board “immediately began reviewing the matter,” and four days after the USA Today report, it announced that it would hold a closed session on Feb. 17. Evidence That day, Dr. Castro announced that he would resign. Claim Dr. Castro was appointed the chancellor in September 2020 after serving as the president of the system’s Fresno campus since 2013. He was the first California native and the first Mexican American to be appointed to oversee the university. Evidence He told The New York Times in an interview after his appointment that he thought C.S.U. was “the most important institution in the United States because of the students that we serve,” who are “from all different backgrounds.” Education advocates and other leaders had said his perspective would reflect those of the students, of whom 43 percent identified as Hispanic or Latinx. Claim In his resignation statement, Dr. Castro said: “As I know from my own lived experience, our state’s and nation’s diverse and talented young people — especially low-income and first-generation students — deserve access to the transformative power of higher education that so often can seem like an elusive dream.” Concluding Statement The board said that it was developing a plan to replace Dr. Castro, but that the executive vice chancellor, Steve Relyea, would serve until an interim chancellor could be named for the system, which encompasses 23 campuses, 477,000 students, and 56,000 faculty and staff members. Evidence It said the trustees intended to pursue steps for a systemwide Title IX assessment, which prohibits sex discrimination in education programs that receive government funding. Claim

nytimes\canada-protest-arrests.txt

Using custom data configuration default-bba98ec5dbc62aab
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-bba98ec5dbc62aab\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-bba98ec5dbc62aab\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-19f728e5855bbb48.arrow

A swell of police officers and heavy tow trucks closed in on the encampment of truckers on Friday after three weeks of demonstrations had roiled the capital and other parts of the country. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8576035499572754}
Twenty-two days after a trucker convoy rumbled into Canada’s capital to protest pandemic restrictions, hundreds of police officers in downtown Ottawa moved in to arrest protesters Friday, hoping to end weeks of gridlock that have roiled the city, infuriated local residents and shaken the country. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9588915705680847}
After a night of unusually heavy snowfall, rows of police officers in fluorescent jackets edged steadily toward protesters on Parliament Hill, backed by at least two armored vehicles and tactical officers armed with rifles and wearing helmets. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9253764748573303}
By late afternoon, protesters were clashing with police officers in front of Canada’s Senate building. The Ottawa police said that some demonstrators had assaulted officers and had tried to remove their weapons. The police deployed crowd-dispersal spray against demonstrators, and officers on horseback were forcing the crowd back, leading to a rush of people trying to flee in a flood of panic. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9634272456169128}
Images on Canadian television showed police officers dragging one recalcitrant protester on the snowy ground near a truck draped with a Canadian flag. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8339104652404785}
At 4:45 p.m., after several hours of making arrests, the police cleared hundreds of protesters from a major intersection outside the Canadian Senate, where a truck blockade has been disrupting daily life. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7626508474349976}
Earlier, B.J. Dichter, a spokesman for the truckers’ convoy, wrote on Twitter that it was time for protesters to leave, saying that the police had smashed the windows of one driver’s truck. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7780007719993591}
Several heavy tow trucks whose license plates had been removed and whose company names were covered with Ottawa police stickers were towing protesters’ trucks away. The police said 21 vehicles had been towed. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9753761887550354}
The Ottawa Police Service said that as of Friday evening, more than 100 people had been arrested on various charges, including “mischief,” a serious offense under Canada’s criminal law, which can carry a prison term of up to 10 years. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.842698872089386}
Among those arrested on Thursday night was Tamara Lich, a leading activist, fund-raiser and singer who in the past has advocated the secession of Canada’s western provinces. She has become one of the main voices of the protest movement. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9249745607376099}
The police mobilization comes after mounting criticism that law enforcement personnel have moved too slowly to end the protests, permitting protesters to taunt local residents for wearing masks, honk their horns in quiet residential neighborhoods and undermine local businesses. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8746832609176636}
Law enforcement officers have created a perimeter with about 100 checkpoints in Ottawa’s downtown core to keep anyone but residents from entering.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4895101487636566}
There was a sense of anticipation across the trucker encampment as reports trickled in from their organizers via a text message chain that police cruisers had been seen massing outside the demonstration area. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7807483077049255}
“They’re coming in,” said one man wearing a Canadian flag as a cape. “They’re going to corral us.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.692491352558136}
While it was proceeding cautiously, the police operation appeared to be the culmination of a tenacious protest that has reverberated around the world and has been a seminal moment in the history of Canadian civil disobedience and law enforcement. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took the rare step this week of declaring a national public order emergency — the first such declaration in half a century — to end the protests. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8303332924842834}
The logjam in the nation’s capital, the weekslong blockade of an Ontario bridge that is vital to automakers’ supply chains and the news media’s projection of all that onto the global stage have given the protests an outsize megaphone and impact. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7918951511383057}
As the police move to clamp down on the protests, the so-called “Freedom Convoy” is likely to live on long after the last trucks depart — if only as a vivid template for how civil disobedience can be effective, in particular in a liberal democracy where the threshold for intervention by law enforcement personnel to stop demonstrations can be high. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8848325610160828}
Much like Occupy Wall Street in 2011, the Canada convoys show that what seem like fringe political movements can gather force at a time of anxiety — and when the world’s cameras are pointed at them. Back then, the driving force was anger over endemic social inequality. These days it is a lethal global pandemic. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9830157160758972}
In addition to Ms. Lich, Chris Barber, another main organizer, was also arrested on Thursday.  {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7083037495613098}
Ms. Lich, of Medicine Hat, Alberta, has emerged as the public face and the most visible leader of the trucker convoy. She is a former fitness instructor who has worked in the energy sector and has sung and played guitar in a band called Blind Monday.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.862297773361206}
The protests began weeks ago with a loosely organized group of truckers who objected to a requirement that they be vaccinated if they cross the U.S.-Canada border. They expanded into a broader movement opposed to an array of pandemic measures and to Mr. Trudeau generally. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8099165558815002}
The image of Canadian police moving in and arresting protesters on Friday in the nation’s capital, backed by tactical officers wielding rifles, is a seminal moment in the history of Canadian law enforcement and civil disobedience. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.564674973487854}
It is happening just days after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took the rare step of declaring a national public order emergency, the first time the Canadian government has taken such action in half a century. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.44287335872650146}
Many of the powers enabled by Mr. Trudeau’s move on Monday had already been given to the police and authorities under a state of emergency enforced earlier by the province of Ontario. But the federal declaration extended them nationwide, and also enabled banks to freeze accounts of protesters and organizers — a step the government says is now underway. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.945977509021759}
The declaration also gave the government the power to restrict mobility, allowing Ottawa’s police to effectively seal off the city’s downtown core to residents and people who work in the area. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.752102792263031}
Under the act, police services across the country have the power to seize trucks and other vehicles used in the protests. Demonstrations that “go beyond lawful protest” can be banned, the prime minister said this week. But Mr. Trudeau and members of his cabinet offered repeated assurance that the act would not be used to suspend “fundamental rights.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9865425825119019}
Mr. Trudeau’s extraordinary response brought back memories of October 1970 and a tumultuous period known as the October Crisis, when Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau — Justin Trudeau’s father — quashed a wave of terrorism by a violent Quebec separatist group by invoking the War Measures Act, and then sending in troops to Montreal. It was the only time in Canadian history that the war act was applied in peacetime. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9320892095565796}
The Emergencies Act was introduced in July 1988 to replace the war act. Mr. Trudeau has said that he would not use his authority under the declaration to deploy the military against the protesters. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8029153347015381}
As pop music played from a truck parked in front of the Canada’s Senate building, police officers surrounded the small offshoot encampment on both sides. At one point, “Let’s Get it On” by Marvin Gaye echoed through the streets. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6409274935722351}
In olive green riot gear, the police cleared a line through the trucks, having already removed demonstrators from a number of the vehicles. On the other side of the knot of trucks, roughly 40 police officers in red-knit caps began to march down Rideau Street, in Ottawa’s city center, joining others on another side and filling out their ranks with more officers as trucks revved their engines. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.990708589553833}
In front of Parliament, many members of the main protest group dashed over to watch the slow-moving advance of police officers toward an intersection blocked by other demonstrators and trucks to the east. Protesters swiftly retreated as officers, half a block away, stepped forward. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8793973922729492}
“They’re coming in,” said one man wearing a Canadian flag as a cape. “They’re going to corral us.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.692491352558136}
The truckers who remained, many of whom have been holding out for weeks, began to grow weary on Friday as the police closed in on them. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.48697414994239807}
Mike Marsh, 48, doesn’t want to leave, but he knows what’s coming. “We can’t stop them,” he said, nodding toward the direction of the police formation heading toward the stronghold of protesters still camped out near Parliament. “All we can do is slow them down.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8925086259841919}
Mr. Marsh hasn’t been a commercial truck driver since getting in an accident two years ago, he said. Now he’s looking for a truck to sleep in tonight to avoid areas now occupied by law enforcement. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8558369278907776}
Wearing an umbrella hat emblazoned with the Canadian flag, Mr. Marsh said he couldn’t see a future for himself if the truckers have to back down. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5728399157524109}
“If we lose this fight I’m driving straight to Florida,” he said, “because there is no home here for me any more.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.41229233145713806}
For residents of Ottawa, the clampdown comes as a welcome reprieve after weeks of what many have called an inadequate response from law enforcement to the occupation. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7117354869842529}
Kathryn Moore, who works in administration at the University of Ottawa, lives west of downtown, close enough that when the wind blew the right way, she could smell diesel fumes and hear horns blaring. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6967591047286987}
Since the protests began, Ms. Moore said she hasn’t felt comfortable going to her office. “I headed in a couple times and just turned around,” she said, adding, “I feel relief that this is finally happening.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8777123093605042}
Children scampered gleefully outside in the cold on Thursday, playing street hockey among the growling trucks occupying Parliament Hill and jumping on bouncy castles inflated for their entertainment. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6208080053329468}
Some were the sons and daughters of the truckers who have been camped here for nearly three weeks. Others were brought by their parents in a show of support for the convoy. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9573219418525696}
On Wednesday, Ottawa police officers went truck to truck handing out a notice telling demonstrators they were breaking the law and faced arrest. It warned that anyone taking a minor to an unlawful protest could be fined up to 5,000 Canadian dollars “and/or potentially spend up to five years in prison.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9779585003852844}
Outside Parliament with his son and two daughters on Thursday, wearing “Make America Great Again” baseball caps, Baret McAuley, a retired oil field company manager, said the notice did not change his plans to protest with his children, Emily, 17, and Ryan and Sarah, both 12. They had driven more than 1,700 miles from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, a 30-hour trip. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9803502559661865}
“I don’t believe that any person with a soul will take away my children,” said Mr. McAuley, 47. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.37780630588531494}
A woman, who requested anonymity because she feared the consequences of violating the police order, said she arrived at the protest that morning with her young child, only to learn en route about the possible risk. They stood waiting on the street for a ride back home, she said, unwilling to take any chances. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9463001489639282}
Irwin Elman, who formerly served as Ontario’s child and youth advocate, sharply criticized protesting parents who planned to remain there with children. “To stay there and not exercise a parent’s duty of care to their children, and put their own rights ahead of the rights of their children, it’s unforgivable and selfish,” he said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6770651340484619}
Last week, police said children were present in about 25 percent of the heavy trucks at the protest. As the police appeared to be bracing on Thursday to remove the protesters, there were fewer minors among the trucks. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9424446225166321}
Interim Ottawa police chief Steve Bell said in a statement Wednesday that police will be working with the Children’s Aid Society and have “a plan” to keep young people safe in the event of their caregivers’ arrest. He did not elaborate. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9469777345657349}
In a statement, the Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa on Wednesday urged parents to make child care arrangements should they be arrested. If children and parents are separated due to law enforcement action, the organization said, it will “work to reunite families as soon as possible.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9224864840507507}
Surrounded by five of his eight children, Daryl Sheppard, a teacher from North Bay, Ontario, 220 miles northwest of Ottawa, walked through the protest on Thursday holding an anti-vaccination sign. Mr. Sheppard, 41, said he and his children would remain in Ottawa, in defiance of the emergency orders. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9718604683876038}
“I’m not really concerned with laws that infringe on my rights as a citizen, my right to bear witness,” he said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.431428998708725}
There are plenty of coronavirus deniers and conspiracy theorists among the trucks in downtown Ottawa, but Mike Johnson doesn’t count himself among them. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4766385555267334}
Mr. Johnson, 53, said Thursday he wasn’t even particularly concerned about government mandates or vaccine passports until his son urged him to drive to the nation’s capital to protest against them a few weeks ago. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9518074989318848}
But now his fire engine red truck, the only thing of significant value he owns, is parked right outside Canada’s Parliament — and Mr. Johnson says he’s prepared for the police to seize it and to forsake his livelihood to defend the cause. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.7634939551353455}
“When we turned our headlights toward Ottawa, I don’t think any of us knew what we were driving into,” said Mr. Johnson, a trucker from Niagara, Ontario. “I didn’t realize how bad it was until I got here.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8393068909645081}
Some among the protesters have links to far-right parties whose support is so low that they hold no seats in the federal Parliament. Mr. Johnson said that he supports one such party, the People’s Party of Canada, whose leader has railed against multiculturalism, immigration and climate change “hysteria.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8977844715118408}
The logjam in the nation’s capital, the weekslong blockade of an Ontario bridge that is vital to automakers’ supply chains and the media projection of all that onto the global stage have given the protests an outsized megaphone and impact. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.776948869228363}
As the police clamp down on the protests, the so-called “Freedom Convoy” will likely live on long after the last trucks depart — if only as a vivid template of how civil disobedience can be effective, in particular in a liberal democracy where the threshold for law enforcement intervening to stop demonstrations can be high. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8288736343383789}
Much like Occupy Wall Street in 2011, the Canada convoys show that what seem like fringe political movements can gather force at a time of anxiety — and when the world’s cameras are pointed at them. Back then, the driving force was anger over endemic social inequality. These days it is a lethal global pandemic. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9830157160758972}
Mr. Johnson never got vaccinated and didn’t have to — hauling scrap metal around northern Ontario doesn’t require border crossing. He said he believes the coronavirus is real and when people have knocked on the door of his cab to talk about conspiracy theories he refuses to engage. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9725605249404907}
“That’s not why I’m here,” he said. “It’s a distraction.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.22395727038383484}
During the occupation, his centrally located truck became a kind of command station for anyone who needed a break from the bitter cold or a place to charge a phone. The throngs of people who stopped by have moved Mr. Johnson with stories of losing their work because they don’t want to get vaccinated. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9664930701255798}
Mr. Johnson believes that even once the police arrive in force, the truckers will have made a lasting mark on the country by drawing attention to their demands. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5196710228919983}
“This has already been a positive accomplishment,” he said, eyeing the police car parked on the lawn of the Parliament building. “Regardless of what happens.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.413126677274704}
Canada has employed strict restrictions in its efforts to fight the coronavirus pandemic. But unlike in the United States, such measures have received very little pushback or politicization. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5626405477523804}
However, a month ago, a law was passed requiring truckers who cross the border into the United States to be vaccinated, threatening the livelihoods of unvaccinated truckers. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.783822774887085}
So a group of them, along with other organizations, assembled a convoy and drove across Canada toward the capital, Ottawa, in protest. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8183137774467468}
The demonstration, which many thought would last only a few days, has turned into a noisy, three-week occupation and has led Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to declare a state of national emergency. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5729657411575317}
“The Daily” explores how Canada got to this point, and what the protest is like on the ground. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6170654296875}
She is a former fitness instructor who has sung and played guitar in a band called “Blind Monday” in Medicine Hat, Alberta. She was a senior member of a splinter party that advocated for Canada’s Western provinces to secede from the country. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8784675002098083}
And now Tamara Lich, 47, has emerged as the public face and the most visible leader of the trucker convoy against pandemic restrictions that has roiled the nation’s capital, shaken the country and prompted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to take the drastic step of declaring a national public order emergency. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9047033786773682}
That visibility rose on Thursday night when Ms. Lich was arrested in Ottawa. She faced one charge for “counselling to commit the offence of mischief,” the Ottawa police said in a statement on Friday, and was due in court on Friday. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.969174325466156}
Ms. Lich speaks publicly in measured tones, and has become adept at deploying social media — and her Twitter feed — to amplify the protesters’ grievances. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4768873155117035}
At a news conference in the Sheraton Ottawa Hotel on Monday, opened to media other than solely conservative-leaning news outlets for one of the first times, there was an air of gravitas in a room that echoed with the constant coughing of dozens of maskless supporters. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7269258499145508}
Wearing or not wearing a mask has become a potent political statement during the protests and some Ottawa residents have complained of being taunted by protesters. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3839433193206787}
“Some of you might oppose our grievances,” Ms. Lich said to the television cameras. Like other members of the movement, she does not wear a mask. “However, democratic society will always have non-trivial disagreements, and righteous dissidents,” she added. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7235902547836304}
What message discipline exists in the protest movement has come from Ms. Lich, said Jay Hill, the interim leader of the Maverick Party, a small right-of-center group based out of Calgary, Alberta, created to promote the separation of Canada’s three western Prairie Provinces from the rest of the country. Ms. Lich, who worked previously in the energy sector, has deep ties to the group. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.916060745716095}
Even before the convoy assembled, its messaging was Ms. Lich’s preoccupation, according to Mr. Hill, who said she called him several times even before arriving in Ottawa to strategize. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.682661235332489}
“We had a number of discussions about staying on message, about the need in this modern-day world of politics to have a very clearly defined message that is understandable and simple, a message that people can grasp hold of and run with,” he said. “Tamara clearly understands that.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5618240237236023}
Ms. Lich played a leading role in organizing a GoFundMe campaign for the protests that raised $7.8 million before the crowdfunding site shut it down after receiving “police reports of violence and other unlawful activity,” GoFundMe said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9210736155509949}
B.J. Dichter, an official spokesman for the convoy, said he joined the effort after Ms. Lich sought help managing the swell of donations flowing into a GoFundMe page. Mr. Dichter has a history of spouting anti-Islamist views and once said that “political Islam” is “rotting away at our society like syphilis.” He has rejected claims of racism. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9867839813232422}
Within the occupiers’ tightly managed ground operations, there are military hallmarks, outlined and executed by the several higher-ups who have backgrounds in the armed forces and law enforcement, according to leading members of the group. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5533501505851746}
Their organization includes oversight of each occupied street by a so-called road captain, with sections divided and overseen by block captains who operate below them. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6434155702590942}
Before becoming a prominent face of the protests, Ms. Lich was a personal trainer in Medicine Hat, a town once dubbed “Hell’s Basement” by Rudyard Kipling for its location on top of a huge natural gas field. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5827953815460205}
Zach Smithson, an employee at Body Building Depot Fitness Emporium, where Ms. Lich used to work, said she has become the talk of the town. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6846789121627808}
“I think we are all very proud of her,” he said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4039466381072998}
Ms. Lich did not respond to a call and text message requesting an interview. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.660437822341919}
With police forces swelling in the area Friday morning, and tow trucks and other heavy equipment poised to move against them, the protesting truck drivers who have occupied downtown Ottawa for weeks were on alert on Friday for imminent police action. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9232434034347534}
Like truckers who had mounted blockades in other parts of Canada, they expressed defiance and the intent to hold firm against any effort to disperse them. But the defiance melted away at the other protest sites as law enforcement moved in, and the big question on Friday was whether the same would happen in Ottawa. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9873840808868408}
Around noon, a spokesman for the protesters, B.J. Dichter, tweeted that “It’s time to leave. @OttawaPolice please allow the remaining trucks to leave in #Peace.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6326234340667725}
An hour later, it was unclear how quickly, or if at all, Mr. Dichter’s message would spread or how influential it would be.  {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5945359468460083}
Some protesters said they have been hearing from friends and family members, begging them to leave. Some of them have no way to leave. They are physically backed into one another, and some of them have let air out of their tires or bled their brake lines. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9270268082618713}
On Thursday, Samantha Dougherty, 32, a protest supporter, patrolled the area around a truck facing Parliament. Inside the truck was her new friend, Lenny Frey, she said, who had been parked there for 20 days and had no intention of leaving. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9321501851081848}
“Nobody is allowed within 6 feet of this truck,” said Ms. Dougherty, a blow horn in one hand and a cigarette in the other. “This truck is not moving, over my dead body.”  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8981414437294006}
Any police response would be an overreaction, said another protester, Mark Fenson, 55, who said he was a drug and alcohol counselor from Petersburg, Ontario, and had spent the last 22 months attending anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown protests. Pointing toward the encampment on Thursday, which at times has included recreation activities for children, he said a clampdown would be “going a little far for a bunch of bouncy castles.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9866690635681152}
Still, Mr. Fenson said he would allow himself to be arrested, although he felt Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the police were unfairly targeting the protesters. He said he believed that the official forces were acting on behalf of global elites trying to enforce a new world order. “I’m not about to fight against them,” he said. “I’ll deal with them in court.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7934477925300598}

A swell of police officers and heavy tow trucks closed in on the encampment of truckers on Friday after three weeks of demonstrations had roiled the capital and other parts of the country. Twenty-two days after a trucker convoy rumbled into Canada’s capital to protest pandemic restrictions, hundreds of police officers in downtown Ottawa moved in to arrest protesters Friday, hoping to end weeks of gridlock that have roiled the city, infuriated local residents and shaken the country. After a night of unusually heavy snowfall, rows of police officers in fluorescent jackets edged steadily toward protesters on Parliament Hill, backed by at least two armored vehicles and tactical officers armed with rifles and wearing helmets. By late afternoon, protesters were clashing with police officers in front of Canada’s Senate building. The Ottawa police said that some demonstrators had assaulted officers and had tried to remove their weapons. The police deployed crowd-dispersal spray against demonstrators, and officers on horseback were forcing the crowd back, leading to a rush of people trying to flee in a flood of panic. Images on Canadian television showed police officers dragging one recalcitrant protester on the snowy ground near a truck draped with a Canadian flag. At 4:45 p.m., after several hours of making arrests, the police cleared hundreds of protesters from a major intersection outside the Canadian Senate, where a truck blockade has been disrupting daily life. Earlier, B.J. Dichter, a spokesman for the truckers’ convoy, wrote on Twitter that it was time for protesters to leave, saying that the police had smashed the windows of one driver’s truck. Several heavy tow trucks whose license plates had been removed and whose company names were covered with Ottawa police stickers were towing protesters’ trucks away. The police said 21 vehicles had been towed. The Ottawa Police Service said that as of Friday evening, more than 100 people had been arrested on various charges, including “mischief,” a serious offense under Canada’s criminal law, which can carry a prison term of up to 10 years. Among those arrested on Thursday night was Tamara Lich, a leading activist, fund-raiser and singer who in the past has advocated the secession of Canada’s western provinces. She has become one of the main voices of the protest movement. The police mobilization comes after mounting criticism that law enforcement personnel have moved too slowly to end the protests, permitting protesters to taunt local residents for wearing masks, honk their horns in quiet residential neighborhoods and undermine local businesses. Law enforcement officers have created a perimeter with about 100 checkpoints in Ottawa’s downtown core to keep anyone but residents from entering. There was a sense of anticipation across the trucker encampment as reports trickled in from their organizers via a text message chain that police cruisers had been seen massing outside the demonstration area. “They’re coming in,” said one man wearing a Canadian flag as a cape. “They’re going to corral us.” While it was proceeding cautiously, the police operation appeared to be the culmination of a tenacious protest that has reverberated around the world and has been a seminal moment in the history of Canadian civil disobedience and law enforcement. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took the rare step this week of declaring a national public order emergency — the first such declaration in half a century — to end the protests. The logjam in the nation’s capital, the weekslong blockade of an Ontario bridge that is vital to automakers’ supply chains and the news media’s projection of all that onto the global stage have given the protests an outsize megaphone and impact. As the police move to clamp down on the protests, the so-called “Freedom Convoy” is likely to live on long after the last trucks depart — if only as a vivid template for how civil disobedience can be effective, in particular in a liberal democracy where the threshold for intervention by law enforcement personnel to stop demonstrations can be high. Much like Occupy Wall Street in 2011, the Canada convoys show that what seem like fringe political movements can gather force at a time of anxiety — and when the world’s cameras are pointed at them. Back then, the driving force was anger over endemic social inequality. These days it is a lethal global pandemic. Evidence In addition to Ms. Lich, Chris Barber, another main organizer, was also arrested on Thursday. Claim Ms. Lich, of Medicine Hat, Alberta, has emerged as the public face and the most visible leader of the trucker convoy. She is a former fitness instructor who has worked in the energy sector and has sung and played guitar in a band called Blind Monday. The protests began weeks ago with a loosely organized group of truckers who objected to a requirement that they be vaccinated if they cross the U.S.-Canada border. They expanded into a broader movement opposed to an array of pandemic measures and to Mr. Trudeau generally. The image of Canadian police moving in and arresting protesters on Friday in the nation’s capital, backed by tactical officers wielding rifles, is a seminal moment in the history of Canadian law enforcement and civil disobedience. It is happening just days after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took the rare step of declaring a national public order emergency, the first time the Canadian government has taken such action in half a century. Many of the powers enabled by Mr. Trudeau’s move on Monday had already been given to the police and authorities under a state of emergency enforced earlier by the province of Ontario. But the federal declaration extended them nationwide, and also enabled banks to freeze accounts of protesters and organizers — a step the government says is now underway. Evidence The declaration also gave the government the power to restrict mobility, allowing Ottawa’s police to effectively seal off the city’s downtown core to residents and people who work in the area. Claim Under the act, police services across the country have the power to seize trucks and other vehicles used in the protests. Demonstrations that “go beyond lawful protest” can be banned, the prime minister said this week. But Mr. Trudeau and members of his cabinet offered repeated assurance that the act would not be used to suspend “fundamental rights.” Mr. Trudeau’s extraordinary response brought back memories of October 1970 and a tumultuous period known as the October Crisis, when Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau — Justin Trudeau’s father — quashed a wave of terrorism by a violent Quebec separatist group by invoking the War Measures Act, and then sending in troops to Montreal. It was the only time in Canadian history that the war act was applied in peacetime. The Emergencies Act was introduced in July 1988 to replace the war act. Mr. Trudeau has said that he would not use his authority under the declaration to deploy the military against the protesters. As pop music played from a truck parked in front of the Canada’s Senate building, police officers surrounded the small offshoot encampment on both sides. At one point, “Let’s Get it On” by Marvin Gaye echoed through the streets. In olive green riot gear, the police cleared a line through the trucks, having already removed demonstrators from a number of the vehicles. On the other side of the knot of trucks, roughly 40 police officers in red-knit caps began to march down Rideau Street, in Ottawa’s city center, joining others on another side and filling out their ranks with more officers as trucks revved their engines. In front of Parliament, many members of the main protest group dashed over to watch the slow-moving advance of police officers toward an intersection blocked by other demonstrators and trucks to the east. Protesters swiftly retreated as officers, half a block away, stepped forward. “They’re coming in,” said one man wearing a Canadian flag as a cape. “They’re going to corral us.” Evidence The truckers who remained, many of whom have been holding out for weeks, began to grow weary on Friday as the police closed in on them. Claim Mike Marsh, 48, doesn’t want to leave, but he knows what’s coming. “We can’t stop them,” he said, nodding toward the direction of the police formation heading toward the stronghold of protesters still camped out near Parliament. “All we can do is slow them down.” Mr. Marsh hasn’t been a commercial truck driver since getting in an accident two years ago, he said. Now he’s looking for a truck to sleep in tonight to avoid areas now occupied by law enforcement. Wearing an umbrella hat emblazoned with the Canadian flag, Mr. Marsh said he couldn’t see a future for himself if the truckers have to back down. Evidence “If we lose this fight I’m driving straight to Florida,” he said, “because there is no home here for me any more.” For residents of Ottawa, the clampdown comes as a welcome reprieve after weeks of what many have called an inadequate response from law enforcement to the occupation. Claim Kathryn Moore, who works in administration at the University of Ottawa, lives west of downtown, close enough that when the wind blew the right way, she could smell diesel fumes and hear horns blaring. Since the protests began, Ms. Moore said she hasn’t felt comfortable going to her office. “I headed in a couple times and just turned around,” she said, adding, “I feel relief that this is finally happening.” Children scampered gleefully outside in the cold on Thursday, playing street hockey among the growling trucks occupying Parliament Hill and jumping on bouncy castles inflated for their entertainment. Some were the sons and daughters of the truckers who have been camped here for nearly three weeks. Others were brought by their parents in a show of support for the convoy. On Wednesday, Ottawa police officers went truck to truck handing out a notice telling demonstrators they were breaking the law and faced arrest. It warned that anyone taking a minor to an unlawful protest could be fined up to 5,000 Canadian dollars “and/or potentially spend up to five years in prison.” Outside Parliament with his son and two daughters on Thursday, wearing “Make America Great Again” baseball caps, Baret McAuley, a retired oil field company manager, said the notice did not change his plans to protest with his children, Emily, 17, and Ryan and Sarah, both 12. They had driven more than 1,700 miles from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, a 30-hour trip. Evidence “I don’t believe that any person with a soul will take away my children,” said Mr. McAuley, 47. Claim A woman, who requested anonymity because she feared the consequences of violating the police order, said she arrived at the protest that morning with her young child, only to learn en route about the possible risk. They stood waiting on the street for a ride back home, she said, unwilling to take any chances. Irwin Elman, who formerly served as Ontario’s child and youth advocate, sharply criticized protesting parents who planned to remain there with children. “To stay there and not exercise a parent’s duty of care to their children, and put their own rights ahead of the rights of their children, it’s unforgivable and selfish,” he said. Last week, police said children were present in about 25 percent of the heavy trucks at the protest. As the police appeared to be bracing on Thursday to remove the protesters, there were fewer minors among the trucks. Interim Ottawa police chief Steve Bell said in a statement Wednesday that police will be working with the Children’s Aid Society and have “a plan” to keep young people safe in the event of their caregivers’ arrest. He did not elaborate. In a statement, the Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa on Wednesday urged parents to make child care arrangements should they be arrested. If children and parents are separated due to law enforcement action, the organization said, it will “work to reunite families as soon as possible.” Surrounded by five of his eight children, Daryl Sheppard, a teacher from North Bay, Ontario, 220 miles northwest of Ottawa, walked through the protest on Thursday holding an anti-vaccination sign. Mr. Sheppard, 41, said he and his children would remain in Ottawa, in defiance of the emergency orders. Evidence “I’m not really concerned with laws that infringe on my rights as a citizen, my right to bear witness,” he said. Claim There are plenty of coronavirus deniers and conspiracy theorists among the trucks in downtown Ottawa, but Mike Johnson doesn’t count himself among them. Mr. Johnson, 53, said Thursday he wasn’t even particularly concerned about government mandates or vaccine passports until his son urged him to drive to the nation’s capital to protest against them a few weeks ago. Evidence But now his fire engine red truck, the only thing of significant value he owns, is parked right outside Canada’s Parliament — and Mr. Johnson says he’s prepared for the police to seize it and to forsake his livelihood to defend the cause. Rebuttal “When we turned our headlights toward Ottawa, I don’t think any of us knew what we were driving into,” said Mr. Johnson, a trucker from Niagara, Ontario. “I didn’t realize how bad it was until I got here.” Some among the protesters have links to far-right parties whose support is so low that they hold no seats in the federal Parliament. Mr. Johnson said that he supports one such party, the People’s Party of Canada, whose leader has railed against multiculturalism, immigration and climate change “hysteria.” The logjam in the nation’s capital, the weekslong blockade of an Ontario bridge that is vital to automakers’ supply chains and the media projection of all that onto the global stage have given the protests an outsized megaphone and impact. As the police clamp down on the protests, the so-called “Freedom Convoy” will likely live on long after the last trucks depart — if only as a vivid template of how civil disobedience can be effective, in particular in a liberal democracy where the threshold for law enforcement intervening to stop demonstrations can be high. Much like Occupy Wall Street in 2011, the Canada convoys show that what seem like fringe political movements can gather force at a time of anxiety — and when the world’s cameras are pointed at them. Back then, the driving force was anger over endemic social inequality. These days it is a lethal global pandemic. Mr. Johnson never got vaccinated and didn’t have to — hauling scrap metal around northern Ontario doesn’t require border crossing. He said he believes the coronavirus is real and when people have knocked on the door of his cab to talk about conspiracy theories he refuses to engage. Evidence “That’s not why I’m here,” he said. “It’s a distraction.” Claim During the occupation, his centrally located truck became a kind of command station for anyone who needed a break from the bitter cold or a place to charge a phone. The throngs of people who stopped by have moved Mr. Johnson with stories of losing their work because they don’t want to get vaccinated. Evidence Mr. Johnson believes that even once the police arrive in force, the truckers will have made a lasting mark on the country by drawing attention to their demands. Claim “This has already been a positive accomplishment,” he said, eyeing the police car parked on the lawn of the Parliament building. “Regardless of what happens.” Canada has employed strict restrictions in its efforts to fight the coronavirus pandemic. But unlike in the United States, such measures have received very little pushback or politicization. Evidence However, a month ago, a law was passed requiring truckers who cross the border into the United States to be vaccinated, threatening the livelihoods of unvaccinated truckers. Rebuttal So a group of them, along with other organizations, assembled a convoy and drove across Canada toward the capital, Ottawa, in protest. The demonstration, which many thought would last only a few days, has turned into a noisy, three-week occupation and has led Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to declare a state of national emergency. Evidence “The Daily” explores how Canada got to this point, and what the protest is like on the ground. Claim She is a former fitness instructor who has sung and played guitar in a band called “Blind Monday” in Medicine Hat, Alberta. She was a senior member of a splinter party that advocated for Canada’s Western provinces to secede from the country. And now Tamara Lich, 47, has emerged as the public face and the most visible leader of the trucker convoy against pandemic restrictions that has roiled the nation’s capital, shaken the country and prompted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to take the drastic step of declaring a national public order emergency. That visibility rose on Thursday night when Ms. Lich was arrested in Ottawa. She faced one charge for “counselling to commit the offence of mischief,” the Ottawa police said in a statement on Friday, and was due in court on Friday. Ms. Lich speaks publicly in measured tones, and has become adept at deploying social media — and her Twitter feed — to amplify the protesters’ grievances. At a news conference in the Sheraton Ottawa Hotel on Monday, opened to media other than solely conservative-leaning news outlets for one of the first times, there was an air of gravitas in a room that echoed with the constant coughing of dozens of maskless supporters. Wearing or not wearing a mask has become a potent political statement during the protests and some Ottawa residents have complained of being taunted by protesters. “Some of you might oppose our grievances,” Ms. Lich said to the television cameras. Like other members of the movement, she does not wear a mask. “However, democratic society will always have non-trivial disagreements, and righteous dissidents,” she added. What message discipline exists in the protest movement has come from Ms. Lich, said Jay Hill, the interim leader of the Maverick Party, a small right-of-center group based out of Calgary, Alberta, created to promote the separation of Canada’s three western Prairie Provinces from the rest of the country. Ms. Lich, who worked previously in the energy sector, has deep ties to the group. Even before the convoy assembled, its messaging was Ms. Lich’s preoccupation, according to Mr. Hill, who said she called him several times even before arriving in Ottawa to strategize. “We had a number of discussions about staying on message, about the need in this modern-day world of politics to have a very clearly defined message that is understandable and simple, a message that people can grasp hold of and run with,” he said. “Tamara clearly understands that.” Ms. Lich played a leading role in organizing a GoFundMe campaign for the protests that raised $7.8 million before the crowdfunding site shut it down after receiving “police reports of violence and other unlawful activity,” GoFundMe said. B.J. Dichter, an official spokesman for the convoy, said he joined the effort after Ms. Lich sought help managing the swell of donations flowing into a GoFundMe page. Mr. Dichter has a history of spouting anti-Islamist views and once said that “political Islam” is “rotting away at our society like syphilis.” He has rejected claims of racism. Evidence Within the occupiers’ tightly managed ground operations, there are military hallmarks, outlined and executed by the several higher-ups who have backgrounds in the armed forces and law enforcement, according to leading members of the group. Claim Their organization includes oversight of each occupied street by a so-called road captain, with sections divided and overseen by block captains who operate below them. Before becoming a prominent face of the protests, Ms. Lich was a personal trainer in Medicine Hat, a town once dubbed “Hell’s Basement” by Rudyard Kipling for its location on top of a huge natural gas field. Zach Smithson, an employee at Body Building Depot Fitness Emporium, where Ms. Lich used to work, said she has become the talk of the town. Evidence “I think we are all very proud of her,” he said. Ms. Lich did not respond to a call and text message requesting an interview. Claim With police forces swelling in the area Friday morning, and tow trucks and other heavy equipment poised to move against them, the protesting truck drivers who have occupied downtown Ottawa for weeks were on alert on Friday for imminent police action. Like truckers who had mounted blockades in other parts of Canada, they expressed defiance and the intent to hold firm against any effort to disperse them. But the defiance melted away at the other protest sites as law enforcement moved in, and the big question on Friday was whether the same would happen in Ottawa. Around noon, a spokesman for the protesters, B.J. Dichter, tweeted that “It’s time to leave. @OttawaPolice please allow the remaining trucks to leave in #Peace.” Evidence An hour later, it was unclear how quickly, or if at all, Mr. Dichter’s message would spread or how influential it would be. Claim Some protesters said they have been hearing from friends and family members, begging them to leave. Some of them have no way to leave. They are physically backed into one another, and some of them have let air out of their tires or bled their brake lines. On Thursday, Samantha Dougherty, 32, a protest supporter, patrolled the area around a truck facing Parliament. Inside the truck was her new friend, Lenny Frey, she said, who had been parked there for 20 days and had no intention of leaving. “Nobody is allowed within 6 feet of this truck,” said Ms. Dougherty, a blow horn in one hand and a cigarette in the other. “This truck is not moving, over my dead body.” Any police response would be an overreaction, said another protester, Mark Fenson, 55, who said he was a drug and alcohol counselor from Petersburg, Ontario, and had spent the last 22 months attending anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown protests. Pointing toward the encampment on Thursday, which at times has included recreation activities for children, he said a clampdown would be “going a little far for a bunch of bouncy castles.” Still, Mr. Fenson said he would allow himself to be arrested, although he felt Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the police were unfairly targeting the protesters. He said he believed that the official forces were acting on behalf of global elites trying to enforce a new world order. “I’m not about to fight against them,” he said. “I’ll deal with them in court.” Evidence

nytimes\cecil-taylor-return-concert.txt

Using custom data configuration default-535e0fad92f48285
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-535e0fad92f48285\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-535e0fad92f48285\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-10094876cb574493.arrow

Creative jazz at its best is a music of discovery: improvisers caught up together in a moment that’s passing even as they conjure it, with the next already materializing between them. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.656577467918396}
The jazz business, meanwhile, is often about rediscovery, as newly issued recordings from canonized greats frequently outsell and out-stream the releases of contemporary musicians, even those certain to be canonized themselves someday. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.48525550961494446}
This Tuesday’s digital-only arrival of a mostly lost concert from the innovative pianist Cecil Taylor exemplifies both points. Recorded at the Town Hall in New York on Nov. 4, 1973, the music gushes as if it were an uncapped fireplug. Previously unreleased, the relentless 88-minute track “Autumn/Parade” catches the inexhaustible Cecil Taylor Unit in the grip of one revelation after another, playing free jazz, a style of improvisation, in the purest definition of free. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9459518194198608}
Unburdened by the boundaries of keys, structures, time signatures and the dictates of each piece’s composer, Taylor, Andrew Cyrille (percussion), Jimmy Lyons (alto saxophone), and Sirone (bass) formed an organic whole, making — discovering — one torrent of sound together. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6001240015029907}
“He never told me what to play,” Cyrille, now 82, said of Taylor last week. “He would say, ‘Play what you hear. Play what you want.’” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7752671837806702}
Or, as Cyrille put it at a 2020 Village Vanguard performance, such in-the-moment musical freedom is “playing life.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.47358760237693787}
Free jazz liberated rhythm sections from the traditional role of keeping time in favor of making sound, as Cyrille does throughout “Autumn/Parade.” Taylor, who died in 2018, famously hit his keys with a percussionist’s force, and for all the considerable harmonic excitement of his runs, what’s most immediately striking on the new release is the Unit’s restless, driving polyrhythms, pulsing clots of tones and beats. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9775871634483337}
“No other pianist I know plays with such physicality at the piano,” Kris Davis, a singular improvising pianist and composer in her own right, said in an interview. “Every idea, whether gestural, melodic or harmonic, is expressed through rhythm.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8772239089012146}
Davis noted that Taylor’s technique of composing fragments of notes in “cells” that he then would “develop, expand and turn upside down” at times appealed more to classical musicians than to jazz musicians, though today his influence is heard widely among improvising pianists. (She cited an expansive list, among them Marilyn Crispell, Jason Moran, Craig Taborn, Myra Melford, Alexander Hawkins, Angelica Sanchez and Vijay Iyer.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9826357364654541}
But on the nightclub scene of the ’60s and ’70s, genius didn’t always mean drink sales, and being in the vanguard of a new approach meant it could be a challenge finding suitable collaborators. Oblivion, the label putting out this release, has called it “The Return Concert” because in ’73, Taylor, then 44, had been mostly absent from recording and being in the New York scene for five years as he pioneered another aspect of avant-garde jazz life: turning to academia. (He taught at Antioch College and the University of Wisconsin, not without controversy.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5724446177482605}
The taping of the Town Hall concert was another feat of improvisation. Taylor had recorded significant LPs (“Conquistador!,” “Unit Structures”) for Blue Note in the late 1960s, but, at this point, was independent. Planning a release for Taylor’s nascent Unit Core label, his sort-of manager, David Laura, turned to an unlikely source: a Columbia student, Fred Seibert, who had recorded concerts for the university radio station and released several blues LPs on the independent Oblivion label with cohorts from a Long Island record store. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9874780178070068}
With borrowed equipment and much youthful confidence, Seibert took the gig — and faced a torrent of music. “I felt like I was under Niagara Falls with every sound coming at me from 360 degrees and fighting for space in my head,” said Seibert, who would go on to engineer and produce records for Muse Records before leaving the music industry at the dawn of the 1980s for Hollywood, where he became a storied producer of animated television. (Series launched under his aegis include “Dexter’s Laboratory,” “Powerpuff Girls” and “Adventure Time.”) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9813597202301025}
For Taylor, “free” also meant freedom from the restraints of the commercial music industry. Releasing the first set would have demanded making a double LP and fading down the music at the end of each side, which Seibert considered contrary to its spirit. A shorter second set proved a better fit: Split between a 16-minute solo Taylor piece and a side-length band workout, the encore performance had a limited 1974 release as “Spring of Two Blue J’s.” One of the 2,000 copies made it to the critic Gary Giddins at The Village Voice; he called it “probably my favorite album made in the last year.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9850165843963623}
The other 88 minutes of music remained on Seibert’s tapes, though he always hoped to put them out in the world. Now, taking advantage of digital music’s lack of physical limitations, he’s unleashing “The Complete, Legendary, Live Return Concert” on the newly reconstituted Oblivion Records. Seibert’s conviction not to fade or shorten the first set, “April/Parade,” and his disinterest in taking on the hassle of traditional distribution has led him to rule out the deluxe CD or vinyl package that such rediscoveries typically enjoy. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9521183371543884}
Critics and fans often view jazz history as a succession of giants making artistic breakthroughs, as the music itself changes in their wake. That accounts for some of the trepidation and revulsion that, decades ago, some critics expressed toward free jazz in general and Taylor in particular — was this the direction it all would go? It perhaps also explains the tendency of some of Taylor’s champions to emphasize what was new in his music (especially techniques inspired by classical composition) to the detriment of its roots in Black American jazz. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5080990195274353}
“He didn’t just come out of the blue and say, ‘I’m Cecil Taylor. I’m doing what I do, and it’s always been this,’” Cyrille said. “He learned from a lot of other people. He played with Johnny Hodges and Hot Lips Page. He observed Thelonious Monk. Now, the concepts were different, but all of those musicians before him played who they were, too — they played their freedom.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9336212873458862}
Almost 50 years after that Town Hall concert, Cyrille is still doing the same. At Dizzy’s Club on Feb. 5, his longstanding group Trio 3 — with the bassist Reggie Workman and the alto saxophonist Oliver Lake — played its last-ever concerts, with guest appearances from Iyer and the altoist Bruce Williams. Cyrille, though, will continue playing live and recording, and he has performances scheduled at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tenn., in March. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9683184027671814}
Cyrille calls playing “therapeutic” and refers to the music he has made with Taylor and so many others throughout a 60-plus year career as “democratic.” Whether in the ’70s with Taylor or with his own groups today, “It’s about self expression,” he said, “and the spiritual signature of the players.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7505831122398376}
He recalled the Taylor of the Town Hall era, hearing the other players’ discoveries, which then fed his own. “Whatever the rest of us played, he used it,” he said. “He absorbed music. And in his playing, you hear how he would deal with it as it entered his body, and how he felt about what was being offered to him. It all came out through the piano.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9742513298988342}

Creative jazz at its best is a music of discovery: improvisers caught up together in a moment that’s passing even as they conjure it, with the next already materializing between them. The jazz business, meanwhile, is often about rediscovery, as newly issued recordings from canonized greats frequently outsell and out-stream the releases of contemporary musicians, even those certain to be canonized themselves someday. Claim This Tuesday’s digital-only arrival of a mostly lost concert from the innovative pianist Cecil Taylor exemplifies both points. Recorded at the Town Hall in New York on Nov. 4, 1973, the music gushes as if it were an uncapped fireplug. Previously unreleased, the relentless 88-minute track “Autumn/Parade” catches the inexhaustible Cecil Taylor Unit in the grip of one revelation after another, playing free jazz, a style of improvisation, in the purest definition of free. Unburdened by the boundaries of keys, structures, time signatures and the dictates of each piece’s composer, Taylor, Andrew Cyrille (percussion), Jimmy Lyons (alto saxophone), and Sirone (bass) formed an organic whole, making — discovering — one torrent of sound together. “He never told me what to play,” Cyrille, now 82, said of Taylor last week. “He would say, ‘Play what you hear. Play what you want.’” Or, as Cyrille put it at a 2020 Village Vanguard performance, such in-the-moment musical freedom is “playing life.” Free jazz liberated rhythm sections from the traditional role of keeping time in favor of making sound, as Cyrille does throughout “Autumn/Parade.” Taylor, who died in 2018, famously hit his keys with a percussionist’s force, and for all the considerable harmonic excitement of his runs, what’s most immediately striking on the new release is the Unit’s restless, driving polyrhythms, pulsing clots of tones and beats. “No other pianist I know plays with such physicality at the piano,” Kris Davis, a singular improvising pianist and composer in her own right, said in an interview. “Every idea, whether gestural, melodic or harmonic, is expressed through rhythm.” Davis noted that Taylor’s technique of composing fragments of notes in “cells” that he then would “develop, expand and turn upside down” at times appealed more to classical musicians than to jazz musicians, though today his influence is heard widely among improvising pianists. (She cited an expansive list, among them Marilyn Crispell, Jason Moran, Craig Taborn, Myra Melford, Alexander Hawkins, Angelica Sanchez and Vijay Iyer.) But on the nightclub scene of the ’60s and ’70s, genius didn’t always mean drink sales, and being in the vanguard of a new approach meant it could be a challenge finding suitable collaborators. Oblivion, the label putting out this release, has called it “The Return Concert” because in ’73, Taylor, then 44, had been mostly absent from recording and being in the New York scene for five years as he pioneered another aspect of avant-garde jazz life: turning to academia. (He taught at Antioch College and the University of Wisconsin, not without controversy.) The taping of the Town Hall concert was another feat of improvisation. Taylor had recorded significant LPs (“Conquistador!,” “Unit Structures”) for Blue Note in the late 1960s, but, at this point, was independent. Planning a release for Taylor’s nascent Unit Core label, his sort-of manager, David Laura, turned to an unlikely source: a Columbia student, Fred Seibert, who had recorded concerts for the university radio station and released several blues LPs on the independent Oblivion label with cohorts from a Long Island record store. With borrowed equipment and much youthful confidence, Seibert took the gig — and faced a torrent of music. “I felt like I was under Niagara Falls with every sound coming at me from 360 degrees and fighting for space in my head,” said Seibert, who would go on to engineer and produce records for Muse Records before leaving the music industry at the dawn of the 1980s for Hollywood, where he became a storied producer of animated television. (Series launched under his aegis include “Dexter’s Laboratory,” “Powerpuff Girls” and “Adventure Time.”) For Taylor, “free” also meant freedom from the restraints of the commercial music industry. Releasing the first set would have demanded making a double LP and fading down the music at the end of each side, which Seibert considered contrary to its spirit. A shorter second set proved a better fit: Split between a 16-minute solo Taylor piece and a side-length band workout, the encore performance had a limited 1974 release as “Spring of Two Blue J’s.” One of the 2,000 copies made it to the critic Gary Giddins at The Village Voice; he called it “probably my favorite album made in the last year.” The other 88 minutes of music remained on Seibert’s tapes, though he always hoped to put them out in the world. Now, taking advantage of digital music’s lack of physical limitations, he’s unleashing “The Complete, Legendary, Live Return Concert” on the newly reconstituted Oblivion Records. Seibert’s conviction not to fade or shorten the first set, “April/Parade,” and his disinterest in taking on the hassle of traditional distribution has led him to rule out the deluxe CD or vinyl package that such rediscoveries typically enjoy. Critics and fans often view jazz history as a succession of giants making artistic breakthroughs, as the music itself changes in their wake. That accounts for some of the trepidation and revulsion that, decades ago, some critics expressed toward free jazz in general and Taylor in particular — was this the direction it all would go? It perhaps also explains the tendency of some of Taylor’s champions to emphasize what was new in his music (especially techniques inspired by classical composition) to the detriment of its roots in Black American jazz. “He didn’t just come out of the blue and say, ‘I’m Cecil Taylor. I’m doing what I do, and it’s always been this,’” Cyrille said. “He learned from a lot of other people. He played with Johnny Hodges and Hot Lips Page. He observed Thelonious Monk. Now, the concepts were different, but all of those musicians before him played who they were, too — they played their freedom.” Almost 50 years after that Town Hall concert, Cyrille is still doing the same. At Dizzy’s Club on Feb. 5, his longstanding group Trio 3 — with the bassist Reggie Workman and the alto saxophonist Oliver Lake — played its last-ever concerts, with guest appearances from Iyer and the altoist Bruce Williams. Cyrille, though, will continue playing live and recording, and he has performances scheduled at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tenn., in March. Cyrille calls playing “therapeutic” and refers to the music he has made with Taylor and so many others throughout a 60-plus year career as “democratic.” Whether in the ’70s with Taylor or with his own groups today, “It’s about self expression,” he said, “and the spiritual signature of the players.” He recalled the Taylor of the Town Hall era, hearing the other players’ discoveries, which then fed his own. “Whatever the rest of us played, he used it,” he said. “He absorbed music. And in his playing, you hear how he would deal with it as it entered his body, and how he felt about what was being offered to him. It all came out through the piano.” Evidence

nytimes\child-tax-credit-poverty-benefits.txt

Using custom data configuration default-bc532f727f0cf47a
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-bc532f727f0cf47a\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-bc532f727f0cf47a\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-171833fc339a6fbd.arrow

Last summer the vast majority of American families with children saw money appear in their bank accounts without doing anything at all. Thanks to legislation passed by Democrats earlier in the year, an expanded Child Tax Credit automatically sent out $300 each month through the rest of the year for every child under 6 and $250 for older ones to people who regularly file taxes. It showcased what government can do when it works at its most efficient: seamlessly deliver meaningful benefits without requiring people to take much, or really any, action. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9909952282905579}
But for the roughly 2.3 million children whose families hadn’t recently filed income taxes, the Child Tax Credit showcased all the worst instincts of governmental bureaucracy. The I.R.S. needed to know how many children they had, how much they earned and where they lived in order to send these families their money. Other government agencies probably had at least some of that data. But at first the I.R.S. wanted to make this group of people file tax returns instead of hunting down the information itself. It was eventually swayed to track it down, and yet when it started a portal for anyone it didn’t find, the form didn’t work on a cellphone, was available only in English, required an email address and came with densely written instructions. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.656493604183197}
The expanded Child Tax Credit payments substantially reduced hardship, lowering the monthly child poverty rate by 30 percent, which meant 3.7 million fewer children lived in poverty in December — one of the most significant reductions in child poverty in generations — after which the payments stopped, thanks to congressional inaction. But it had been projected to cut child poverty in half. To achieve that goal, it would have had to successfully reach all the parents who were owed a payment. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9898062348365784}
The excitement around policymaking is almost always in the moments after ink dries on a bill creating something new. But if a benefit fails to reach the people it’s designed for, it may as well not exist at all. Making government benefits more accessible and efficient doesn’t usually get the spotlight. But it’s often the difference between a family getting what it needs to survive and falling into hardship and destitution. It’s the glue of our democracy. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7937799692153931}
President Biden appears to have taken note of this. Late last year, he issued an executive order meant to improve the “customer experience and service delivery” of the entire federal government. He put forward some ideas, including moving Social Security benefit claims and passport renewals online, reducing paperwork for student loan forgiveness and certifying low-income people for all the assistance they qualify for at once, rather than making them seek out benefits program by program. More important, he shifted the focus of government toward whether or not the customers — that’s us — are having a good experience getting what we deserve. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8960623741149902}
It’s a direction all lawmakers, from the federal level down to counties and cities, should follow. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5733123421669006}
One of the biggest barriers to government benefits is all of the red tape to untangle, particularly for programs that serve low-income people. They were the ones wrangling with the I.R.S.’s nonfiler portal while others got their payments automatically. Benefits delivered through the tax code, which flow so easily that many people don’t think of them as government benefits at all, mostly help the already well-off. Programs for the poor, on the other hand, tend to be bloated with barriers like income tests, work requirements and in-person interviews. It’s not just about applying once, either; many require people to continually recertify, going through the process over and over again. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9672551155090332}
The hassle doesn’t just cost time and effort. It comes with a psychological cost. “You get mad at the D.M.V. because it takes hours to do something that should only take minutes,” Pamela Herd, a sociologist at Georgetown, said. “These kind of stresses can be really large when you’re talking about people who are on a knife’s edge in terms of their ability to pay their rent or feed their children.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9654051661491394}
The barriers are terrible because they separate people from the help they desperately need and are technically owed. But the trouble runs deeper. “If you have negative interactions with the government, you’re going to think negatively about the government and the government’s capacity to actually meet broader social needs,” Dr. Herd said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9196158647537231}
Why would Americans believe politicians who say they’ll create new ways to help them if past promises ended in frustration and empty hands? That distrust, in turn, weakens our democracy, the notion that we elect people to lead us who will listen to us and improve our lives. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6077486276626587}
“Every interaction that a person has with their government, whether that’s a traffic stop or going to the D.M.V. or getting access to SNAP — that’s where democracy is happening,” Elizabeth Linos, a behavioral economist at the University of California, Berkeley, told me. “If we get all of those small interactions right, then we have created a society where the government is responsive to its citizens, and citizens trust that it will deliver when it says it’ll deliver.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9419551491737366}
Mr. Biden’s executive order notes that it is about both getting people what they need and proving that “democracy still works.” And yet it’s clear his administration has only partly learned its own lessons. Just look at its two approaches to free at-home Covid tests. All Americans can go to a Postal Service website, enter their addresses, and sign up in minutes to receive four free tests per household. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5946587324142456}
But when a household runs out of its four free tests, its members have to wrangle with the other option the administration has set up. Insurers have been ordered to cover eight tests per month free. That of course leaves out the 27.4 million people without insurance. Even if you have it, if you don’t buy the tests at your insurer’s preferred pharmacy you have to pay up front, hold on to your receipt and maybe even the test box, and submit a claim for reimbursement, then fight to get it processed. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5539654493331909}
There are trade-offs, given which goals are prioritized. Is it most important to reduce the use of government resources? Is it most important to keep the supposedly undeserving from sneaking in? Or is the goal to ensure that as many people who are eligible get the benefits they deserve as soon as possible? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4893888235092163}
It used to be that experts believed those who needed help the most would work the hardest to get it, overcoming any barriers thrown in their way. But that isn’t true. Work requirements, for example, have mostly kept people off welfare and further impoverished them, and when briefly instituted in Arkansas’s Medicaid program, a work requirement kicked people off — many of whom actually qualified — without increasing how many worked. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7948508858680725}
“The pandemic gave us an opportunity to rethink whether or not all of those hurdles were necessary,” Dr. Linos said. More people were made eligible for unemployment insurance. Stimulus checks were sent to most Americans with no strings attached. Rental assistance rules were loosened to get the money flowing faster. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9728728532791138}
The organization Code for America has long been focused on how to make it easier for people to get the benefits they’re eligible for. So when Democrats expanded Child Tax Credit payments, it built a simple site for nonfilers to claim them. The site sought only information the I.R.S. wasn’t able to get itself, like bank account details, and didn’t require people to track down a bunch of documents. The questions were simplified. It was available in Spanish as well as English. Families were able to fill out the form in 10 to 15 minutes, and virtually all of them didn’t need help. More than 115,000 households used the website to claim $438 million in less than three months, about a quarter of whom had never filed taxes before. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9906141757965088}
Ultimately, the smartest thing isn’t to create better portals for each and every benefit. “How do we get them to do one-stop shopping?” asked Nina Olson, the executive director of the Center for Taxpayer Rights. Instead of the government offering a navigator for Affordable Care Act coverage and a case worker to get housing assistance and I.R.S. outreach workers for Child Tax Credit payments, there could be a single place to sign up for everything at once. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.8861539363861084}
That’s just what Code for America helped set up in Minnesota. It worked with the state to create a new, simplified website where residents can apply for nine programs at once — including food stamps, child care subsidies and housing assistance — that has reduced the time involved from over an hour to less than 12 minutes. It works on a mobile phone, is available in Spanish, makes uploading documents easier, and doesn’t require a log-in. The questions it asks are in clear language and redundant ones are eliminated. Ninety-four percent of people using the new site say they had a positive experience. The organization plans to work with a number of other states to do something similar in the next few years. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9362697601318359}
The simpler the requirements of a program — making it universal so that people don’t have to verify their incomes over and over, say — the fewer hurdles people will have to clear. When programs must include eligibility requirements, more of the burden of deciphering whether each person meets them should be placed on the government instead of the individual. Social Security, for example, tracks our incomes, so that when it comes time to claim benefits, we’re not submitting pay stubs from a lifetime of work. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9804020524024963}
Something as small as requiring a log-in for a government website creates a barrier for people without computers who can’t remember and juggle a bunch of passwords. “Any kind of barriers are amplified when people are stressed,” Eric Giannella, the organization’s data science director, noted. Instead, Code for America uses smart links that allow people to authenticate themselves without a log-in. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9799228310585022}
But Code for America “does want to put itself out of business,” Mr. Giannella said. The point is not to do it for government, but to push government to do things better. “Sometimes,” Tracey Patterson, the vice president of Code for America, told me, “the idea that everything needs to change in order for it to be better is the easiest way for nothing to get done.” {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.49183401465415955}

Last summer the vast majority of American families with children saw money appear in their bank accounts without doing anything at all. Thanks to legislation passed by Democrats earlier in the year, an expanded Child Tax Credit automatically sent out $300 each month through the rest of the year for every child under 6 and $250 for older ones to people who regularly file taxes. It showcased what government can do when it works at its most efficient: seamlessly deliver meaningful benefits without requiring people to take much, or really any, action. But for the roughly 2.3 million children whose families hadn’t recently filed income taxes, the Child Tax Credit showcased all the worst instincts of governmental bureaucracy. The I.R.S. needed to know how many children they had, how much they earned and where they lived in order to send these families their money. Other government agencies probably had at least some of that data. But at first the I.R.S. wanted to make this group of people file tax returns instead of hunting down the information itself. It was eventually swayed to track it down, and yet when it started a portal for anyone it didn’t find, the form didn’t work on a cellphone, was available only in English, required an email address and came with densely written instructions. The expanded Child Tax Credit payments substantially reduced hardship, lowering the monthly child poverty rate by 30 percent, which meant 3.7 million fewer children lived in poverty in December — one of the most significant reductions in child poverty in generations — after which the payments stopped, thanks to congressional inaction. But it had been projected to cut child poverty in half. To achieve that goal, it would have had to successfully reach all the parents who were owed a payment. The excitement around policymaking is almost always in the moments after ink dries on a bill creating something new. But if a benefit fails to reach the people it’s designed for, it may as well not exist at all. Making government benefits more accessible and efficient doesn’t usually get the spotlight. But it’s often the difference between a family getting what it needs to survive and falling into hardship and destitution. It’s the glue of our democracy. President Biden appears to have taken note of this. Late last year, he issued an executive order meant to improve the “customer experience and service delivery” of the entire federal government. He put forward some ideas, including moving Social Security benefit claims and passport renewals online, reducing paperwork for student loan forgiveness and certifying low-income people for all the assistance they qualify for at once, rather than making them seek out benefits program by program. More important, he shifted the focus of government toward whether or not the customers — that’s us — are having a good experience getting what we deserve. Evidence It’s a direction all lawmakers, from the federal level down to counties and cities, should follow. Claim One of the biggest barriers to government benefits is all of the red tape to untangle, particularly for programs that serve low-income people. They were the ones wrangling with the I.R.S.’s nonfiler portal while others got their payments automatically. Benefits delivered through the tax code, which flow so easily that many people don’t think of them as government benefits at all, mostly help the already well-off. Programs for the poor, on the other hand, tend to be bloated with barriers like income tests, work requirements and in-person interviews. It’s not just about applying once, either; many require people to continually recertify, going through the process over and over again. The hassle doesn’t just cost time and effort. It comes with a psychological cost. “You get mad at the D.M.V. because it takes hours to do something that should only take minutes,” Pamela Herd, a sociologist at Georgetown, said. “These kind of stresses can be really large when you’re talking about people who are on a knife’s edge in terms of their ability to pay their rent or feed their children.” The barriers are terrible because they separate people from the help they desperately need and are technically owed. But the trouble runs deeper. “If you have negative interactions with the government, you’re going to think negatively about the government and the government’s capacity to actually meet broader social needs,” Dr. Herd said. Why would Americans believe politicians who say they’ll create new ways to help them if past promises ended in frustration and empty hands? That distrust, in turn, weakens our democracy, the notion that we elect people to lead us who will listen to us and improve our lives. “Every interaction that a person has with their government, whether that’s a traffic stop or going to the D.M.V. or getting access to SNAP — that’s where democracy is happening,” Elizabeth Linos, a behavioral economist at the University of California, Berkeley, told me. “If we get all of those small interactions right, then we have created a society where the government is responsive to its citizens, and citizens trust that it will deliver when it says it’ll deliver.” Mr. Biden’s executive order notes that it is about both getting people what they need and proving that “democracy still works.” And yet it’s clear his administration has only partly learned its own lessons. Just look at its two approaches to free at-home Covid tests. All Americans can go to a Postal Service website, enter their addresses, and sign up in minutes to receive four free tests per household. But when a household runs out of its four free tests, its members have to wrangle with the other option the administration has set up. Insurers have been ordered to cover eight tests per month free. That of course leaves out the 27.4 million people without insurance. Even if you have it, if you don’t buy the tests at your insurer’s preferred pharmacy you have to pay up front, hold on to your receipt and maybe even the test box, and submit a claim for reimbursement, then fight to get it processed. There are trade-offs, given which goals are prioritized. Is it most important to reduce the use of government resources? Is it most important to keep the supposedly undeserving from sneaking in? Or is the goal to ensure that as many people who are eligible get the benefits they deserve as soon as possible? It used to be that experts believed those who needed help the most would work the hardest to get it, overcoming any barriers thrown in their way. But that isn’t true. Work requirements, for example, have mostly kept people off welfare and further impoverished them, and when briefly instituted in Arkansas’s Medicaid program, a work requirement kicked people off — many of whom actually qualified — without increasing how many worked. “The pandemic gave us an opportunity to rethink whether or not all of those hurdles were necessary,” Dr. Linos said. More people were made eligible for unemployment insurance. Stimulus checks were sent to most Americans with no strings attached. Rental assistance rules were loosened to get the money flowing faster. The organization Code for America has long been focused on how to make it easier for people to get the benefits they’re eligible for. So when Democrats expanded Child Tax Credit payments, it built a simple site for nonfilers to claim them. The site sought only information the I.R.S. wasn’t able to get itself, like bank account details, and didn’t require people to track down a bunch of documents. The questions were simplified. It was available in Spanish as well as English. Families were able to fill out the form in 10 to 15 minutes, and virtually all of them didn’t need help. More than 115,000 households used the website to claim $438 million in less than three months, about a quarter of whom had never filed taxes before. Evidence Ultimately, the smartest thing isn’t to create better portals for each and every benefit. “How do we get them to do one-stop shopping?” asked Nina Olson, the executive director of the Center for Taxpayer Rights. Instead of the government offering a navigator for Affordable Care Act coverage and a case worker to get housing assistance and I.R.S. outreach workers for Child Tax Credit payments, there could be a single place to sign up for everything at once. Concluding Statement That’s just what Code for America helped set up in Minnesota. It worked with the state to create a new, simplified website where residents can apply for nine programs at once — including food stamps, child care subsidies and housing assistance — that has reduced the time involved from over an hour to less than 12 minutes. It works on a mobile phone, is available in Spanish, makes uploading documents easier, and doesn’t require a log-in. The questions it asks are in clear language and redundant ones are eliminated. Ninety-four percent of people using the new site say they had a positive experience. The organization plans to work with a number of other states to do something similar in the next few years. The simpler the requirements of a program — making it universal so that people don’t have to verify their incomes over and over, say — the fewer hurdles people will have to clear. When programs must include eligibility requirements, more of the burden of deciphering whether each person meets them should be placed on the government instead of the individual. Social Security, for example, tracks our incomes, so that when it comes time to claim benefits, we’re not submitting pay stubs from a lifetime of work. Something as small as requiring a log-in for a government website creates a barrier for people without computers who can’t remember and juggle a bunch of passwords. “Any kind of barriers are amplified when people are stressed,” Eric Giannella, the organization’s data science director, noted. Instead, Code for America uses smart links that allow people to authenticate themselves without a log-in. Evidence But Code for America “does want to put itself out of business,” Mr. Giannella said. The point is not to do it for government, but to push government to do things better. “Sometimes,” Tracey Patterson, the vice president of Code for America, told me, “the idea that everything needs to change in order for it to be better is the easiest way for nothing to get done.” Rebuttal

nytimes\china-coronavirus-vaccines.txt

Using custom data configuration default-120287c9e82da1ef
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-120287c9e82da1ef\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-120287c9e82da1ef\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-54d2ddbdeef07737.arrow

China has done everything in its power to keep the virus outside its borders and protect its people — almost. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7139524817466736}
It has kept cases and deaths remarkably low through a “zero-Covid” strategy that has involved tracking and tracing every case, closed its borders and locked down cities of millions of people. It fostered domestic vaccines that allowed the country to carry out a massive inoculation effort. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8464835286140442}
But two years into the pandemic, China’s 1.4 billion people still don’t have access to one of the most effective coronavirus vaccines the world has to offer. Those vaccines use the breakthrough mRNA technology that was developed and approved in the West, and they have been embraced by dozens of countries. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8316982984542847}
The effectiveness of Chinese vaccines has been in doubt — partly because they use a century-old method for inoculation. Last spring, the country said it would approve BioNTech, the German mRNA shot made in partnership with Pfizer. Months later, China said that it was also close to producing its own mRNA vaccine. Neither are available today. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9143273830413818}
China’s lack of an mRNA shot — and its delay in approving a viable foreign option — has poked holes in Beijing’s victorious pandemic narrative and prompted experts to question whether the country’s go-it-alone approach is less triumphant than officials would have the world believe. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.652309775352478}
Under Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, the country has turned more inward, promoting self-reliance and championing development in areas like semiconductors and other technology. The delay in recognizing a foreign mRNA vaccine now appears to be a part of that deeply political exercise. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6661863923072815}
China is so committed to competing with the United States and the West on science and technology that some in the scientific community say it is hard to imagine that the state hasn’t pulled out all the stops to develop a homegrown mRNA vaccine. That China has fallen behind on that front, and failed to approve a readily available foreign option, has left many experts baffled. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8118964433670044}
“We don’t know how decisions are made nowadays in China, but a better vaccine would definitely help in maintaining a zero-Covid policy,” said Jin Dongyan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong who has urged his peers in mainland China to approve the BioNTech vaccine. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7770165801048279}
“They are presenting to the world that they are doing well in vaccine development,” he said of officials in Beijing. “And it would be embarrassing for them to show the opposite to the Chinese people.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9272608160972595}
China says its virus policies, which include strict lockdowns, have prevented millions of people from getting sick. But as a consequence, scientists say, the population has not built up enough natural immunity to help fight severe infection, making reliable vaccines even more crucial. And there is slowly mounting pressure on the country to pursue a new approach. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9594160318374634}
In recent months, officials have begun openly discussing the need to introduce better vaccine technology. “We should learn about the good things in other countries, such as mRNA vaccines,” Zhong Nanshan, China’s top respiratory scientist, said at a conference in December. “They have spent years on the research and managed to develop mRNA vaccines in just a few months.” {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.5890862941741943}
China last week approved for emergency use a Covid-19 pill made by Pfizer called Paxlovid, a move that some experts said could help change Beijing’s pandemic strategy. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5031062960624695}
It wasn’t that long ago that China appeared ready to introduce an mRNA vaccine for Covid-19. Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical, BioNTech’s Chinese partner, told investors last year that regulators would approve its mRNA vaccine for use in China by July 2021. The company, which had conducted clinical trials in late 2020, said that it could make as many as a billion doses a year. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9894142150878906}
That optimism has since faded. Chinese authorities now say they are still reviewing documents in order to “make a final decision on the approval of our vaccine,” a spokeswoman for BioNTech said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.45259425044059753}
Fosun did not respond to a request for comment. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7243305444717407}
The approval process for Sinopharm and Sinovac — which manufacture the vaccines that are available in China — looked much different. Chinese regulators changed the rules to allow both Chinese drugmakers to submit their trial data behind schedule. Sinopharm’s vaccine was approved a week after the company filed its application, in December 2020. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.97652268409729}
Vaccines from Sinovac and Sinopharm help prevent hospitalization and death, but their ability to reduce transmission with variants such as Omicron is still in question. Sinovac has shown to be only 51 percent effective against preventing symptomatic disease, according to scientists in Brazil. The World Health Organization said Sinopharm has an efficacy of 78 percent. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9585349559783936}
Though the W.H.O. has signed off on both Chinese vaccines for emergency use, most Western governments favor mRNA technology. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4497533440589905}
As approval for BioNTech languished, China said that it was close to producing a homegrown mRNA shot called ARCoVax. Two private drugmakers and China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences said they were preparing to make 200 million doses by October, a Communist Party newspaper reported in September. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9872965812683105}
Had that happened, it would have been a remarkable achievement for China. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7092635631561279}
Unlike traditional vaccines that use an inactivated virus to trigger a response by the immune system, mRNA vaccines use a genetic molecule that assists cells to make proteins that can set off an immune response in the body. This response creates antibodies that are then used to fight the virus. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9028412699699402}
The first mRNA vaccines for the coronavirus were based on research conducted over decades by scientists in different parts of the world. It took the Western pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna just over a year to take those advances and apply them to a new kind of vaccine able to prevent serious illness and death from Covid-19. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9377731680870056}
The final version of the mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna came together with the help of a multibillion dollar program under the Trump administration called Operation Warp Speed. The Food and Drug Administration determined in 2020 that the BioNTech vaccine has an efficacy rate of 95 percent. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9433559775352478}
“This is not trivial technology,” said John P. Moore, a virologist at Weill Cornell Medicine. “So trying to reverse engineer it from scratch is one of those things where you ask, ‘What could possibly go wrong?’” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5514190196990967}
If China is pursing a program similar to Operation Warp Speed, it has not said anything about it publicly. One of the private companies helping to develop ARCoVax is Suzhou Abogen, a start-up founded in 2019 by a scientist who used to work at Moderna. Before the pandemic, Abogen was developing mRNA drugs for cancer, one of China’s biggest epidemics. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9877480268478394}
The other drugmaker, Walvax, is a publicly listed pharmaceutical group. The two companies’ partnership with the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences suggests strong government backing, though Beijing has not mentioned an official collaboration. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8902856707572937}
Last year, the United States added the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences to an entity list, a federal trade restriction list, accusing it of using biotechnology to support activities like “brain control weaponry.” The designation would make it difficult to export any final vaccine product it develops. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8679938912391663}
Researchers recently published the details of an initial trial of the ARCoVax vaccine involving 120 volunteers. They found it to be safe, and said it produced a moderate level of antibodies but caused more side effects, like fever, than the BioNTech shot. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8565350770950317}
Abogen and Walvax did not respond to requests for comment. A senior executive at Walvax told Reuters last month that it had recruited 28,000 people for a large, Phase 3 clinical trial. ARCoVax is also being tested as a booster. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9396300911903381}
One recent study showed that two doses of Sinovac boosted with an mRNA shot offered strong antibody protection against both the Delta and Omicron variants. But it is still unclear when the ARCoVax vaccine will be available in China. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.85788893699646}
And as the weeks go by, approval for BioNTech seems to grow more elusive. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.9286382794380188}
“It’s very difficult to predict actually when we will get approval,” said Sean Marett, chief business and commercial officer of BioNTech, speaking at a health care conference last month. “But China remains for us an extremely important market,” he added. “We’re very, very committed to it.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8878307938575745}

China has done everything in its power to keep the virus outside its borders and protect its people — almost. Claim It has kept cases and deaths remarkably low through a “zero-Covid” strategy that has involved tracking and tracing every case, closed its borders and locked down cities of millions of people. It fostered domestic vaccines that allowed the country to carry out a massive inoculation effort. Evidence But two years into the pandemic, China’s 1.4 billion people still don’t have access to one of the most effective coronavirus vaccines the world has to offer. Those vaccines use the breakthrough mRNA technology that was developed and approved in the West, and they have been embraced by dozens of countries. Rebuttal The effectiveness of Chinese vaccines has been in doubt — partly because they use a century-old method for inoculation. Last spring, the country said it would approve BioNTech, the German mRNA shot made in partnership with Pfizer. Months later, China said that it was also close to producing its own mRNA vaccine. Neither are available today. China’s lack of an mRNA shot — and its delay in approving a viable foreign option — has poked holes in Beijing’s victorious pandemic narrative and prompted experts to question whether the country’s go-it-alone approach is less triumphant than officials would have the world believe. Under Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, the country has turned more inward, promoting self-reliance and championing development in areas like semiconductors and other technology. The delay in recognizing a foreign mRNA vaccine now appears to be a part of that deeply political exercise. China is so committed to competing with the United States and the West on science and technology that some in the scientific community say it is hard to imagine that the state hasn’t pulled out all the stops to develop a homegrown mRNA vaccine. That China has fallen behind on that front, and failed to approve a readily available foreign option, has left many experts baffled. “We don’t know how decisions are made nowadays in China, but a better vaccine would definitely help in maintaining a zero-Covid policy,” said Jin Dongyan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong who has urged his peers in mainland China to approve the BioNTech vaccine. “They are presenting to the world that they are doing well in vaccine development,” he said of officials in Beijing. “And it would be embarrassing for them to show the opposite to the Chinese people.” China says its virus policies, which include strict lockdowns, have prevented millions of people from getting sick. But as a consequence, scientists say, the population has not built up enough natural immunity to help fight severe infection, making reliable vaccines even more crucial. And there is slowly mounting pressure on the country to pursue a new approach. Evidence In recent months, officials have begun openly discussing the need to introduce better vaccine technology. “We should learn about the good things in other countries, such as mRNA vaccines,” Zhong Nanshan, China’s top respiratory scientist, said at a conference in December. “They have spent years on the research and managed to develop mRNA vaccines in just a few months.” Lead China last week approved for emergency use a Covid-19 pill made by Pfizer called Paxlovid, a move that some experts said could help change Beijing’s pandemic strategy. It wasn’t that long ago that China appeared ready to introduce an mRNA vaccine for Covid-19. Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical, BioNTech’s Chinese partner, told investors last year that regulators would approve its mRNA vaccine for use in China by July 2021. The company, which had conducted clinical trials in late 2020, said that it could make as many as a billion doses a year. That optimism has since faded. Chinese authorities now say they are still reviewing documents in order to “make a final decision on the approval of our vaccine,” a spokeswoman for BioNTech said. Evidence Fosun did not respond to a request for comment. Claim The approval process for Sinopharm and Sinovac — which manufacture the vaccines that are available in China — looked much different. Chinese regulators changed the rules to allow both Chinese drugmakers to submit their trial data behind schedule. Sinopharm’s vaccine was approved a week after the company filed its application, in December 2020. Vaccines from Sinovac and Sinopharm help prevent hospitalization and death, but their ability to reduce transmission with variants such as Omicron is still in question. Sinovac has shown to be only 51 percent effective against preventing symptomatic disease, according to scientists in Brazil. The World Health Organization said Sinopharm has an efficacy of 78 percent. Evidence Though the W.H.O. has signed off on both Chinese vaccines for emergency use, most Western governments favor mRNA technology. Claim As approval for BioNTech languished, China said that it was close to producing a homegrown mRNA shot called ARCoVax. Two private drugmakers and China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences said they were preparing to make 200 million doses by October, a Communist Party newspaper reported in September. Evidence Had that happened, it would have been a remarkable achievement for China. Claim Unlike traditional vaccines that use an inactivated virus to trigger a response by the immune system, mRNA vaccines use a genetic molecule that assists cells to make proteins that can set off an immune response in the body. This response creates antibodies that are then used to fight the virus. The first mRNA vaccines for the coronavirus were based on research conducted over decades by scientists in different parts of the world. It took the Western pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna just over a year to take those advances and apply them to a new kind of vaccine able to prevent serious illness and death from Covid-19. The final version of the mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna came together with the help of a multibillion dollar program under the Trump administration called Operation Warp Speed. The Food and Drug Administration determined in 2020 that the BioNTech vaccine has an efficacy rate of 95 percent. “This is not trivial technology,” said John P. Moore, a virologist at Weill Cornell Medicine. “So trying to reverse engineer it from scratch is one of those things where you ask, ‘What could possibly go wrong?’” If China is pursing a program similar to Operation Warp Speed, it has not said anything about it publicly. One of the private companies helping to develop ARCoVax is Suzhou Abogen, a start-up founded in 2019 by a scientist who used to work at Moderna. Before the pandemic, Abogen was developing mRNA drugs for cancer, one of China’s biggest epidemics. The other drugmaker, Walvax, is a publicly listed pharmaceutical group. The two companies’ partnership with the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences suggests strong government backing, though Beijing has not mentioned an official collaboration. Last year, the United States added the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences to an entity list, a federal trade restriction list, accusing it of using biotechnology to support activities like “brain control weaponry.” The designation would make it difficult to export any final vaccine product it develops. Researchers recently published the details of an initial trial of the ARCoVax vaccine involving 120 volunteers. They found it to be safe, and said it produced a moderate level of antibodies but caused more side effects, like fever, than the BioNTech shot. Abogen and Walvax did not respond to requests for comment. A senior executive at Walvax told Reuters last month that it had recruited 28,000 people for a large, Phase 3 clinical trial. ARCoVax is also being tested as a booster. One recent study showed that two doses of Sinovac boosted with an mRNA shot offered strong antibody protection against both the Delta and Omicron variants. But it is still unclear when the ARCoVax vaccine will be available in China. Evidence And as the weeks go by, approval for BioNTech seems to grow more elusive. Claim “It’s very difficult to predict actually when we will get approval,” said Sean Marett, chief business and commercial officer of BioNTech, speaking at a health care conference last month. “But China remains for us an extremely important market,” he added. “We’re very, very committed to it.” Evidence

nytimes\china-olympics-propaganda.txt

Using custom data configuration default-66607b3ae023340d
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-66607b3ae023340d\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-66607b3ae023340d\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-04f1628ff4a090c6.arrow

This article is published with ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative newsroom. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5295079350471497}
BEIJING — Inside the Potemkin village of China’s propaganda, the Winter Olympics have unfolded as an unalloyed success, a celebration of sports and political harmony that has obscured — critics say whitewashed — the country’s flaws and rights abuses. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3075408637523651}
At Beijing 2022, the hills are snowy, not brown as usual this time of year. A Uyghur skier is the symbol of national unity, the tennis player Peng Shuai just a curious spectator. Athletes and foreign journalists praise the polite volunteers and marvel at the high-speed trains and the robots that boil dumplings and mix drinks. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9870136380195618}
While China’s control of what its domestic viewers and readers consume is well established, the country has spread its own version of the Games beyond its borders, with an arsenal of digital tools that are giving China’s narrative arguably greater reach and more subtlety than ever before. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4311811625957489}
With bots, fake accounts, genuine influencers and other tools, China has been able to selectively edit how the events have appeared, even outside the country, promoting everything that bolsters the official, feel-good story about the Winter Olympics and trying to smother whatever doesn’t. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5027697086334229}
“For the Chinese Communist Party, the Winter Olympics are inseparable from the broader political goal of building up the country’s national image,” said David Bandurski, director of the China Media Project, a monitoring organization. Referring to the country’s leader, he added: “This is what Xi Jinping has called ‘telling China’s story well.’” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9349364638328552}
On Twitter, which is banned in China, Chinese state media outlets and journalists, as well as diplomats, have tried to buff the image of the Games, raving about venues and cooing over the Olympic mascot. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9194518327713013}
China has also sought to influence online discussions in more concealed ways. The New York Times and ProPublica identified a network of more than 3,000 inauthentic-looking Twitter accounts that appeared to be coordinating to promote the Olympics by sharing state media posts with identical comments, for instance. Such accounts tended to be recently created with very few followers, tweeted mostly reposts and nothing of their own, and appeared to operate solely to amplify official Chinese voices. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9879647493362427}
Some of their efforts have centered on an account called Spicy Panda, which has been posting cartoons and videos to push back against calls for a boycott of the Olympics. In one cartoon, Spicy Panda accused the United States of wielding “its deceiving propaganda weapon to stain the Olympics.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9696970582008362}
The tweet was reposted 281 times, all by the fake-looking accounts, but received little other engagement, a strong indication that the network was mobilized to promote the message. Aside from the bursts of promotion, Spicy Panda’s posts about the Olympics received almost no attention. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.972170889377594}
An analysis of Spicy Panda’s supporters turned up 861 accounts — 90 percent of which were created after Dec. 1. The accounts’ first wave of coordinated posts pushed Beijing’s stance that Hong Kong’s legislative council elections were legitimate, though critics have called the vote a sham. Then the accounts turned their attention to the Olympics. (By Thursday, all but one of the accounts had been suspended, shortly after The Times and ProPublica asked Twitter about them.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9908182621002197}
Spicy Panda appears to have a connection with iChongqing, a state media-linked multimedia platform based in Chongqing, a city in central China. The accounts that shared Spicy Panda’s posts often did the same with tweets by iChongqing’s account. IChongqing did not immediately respond to a request for comment. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9836800694465637}
Other botlike accounts promoted hashtags that seemed aimed at drowning out criticism of China, a hallmark of previous campaigns. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4656507968902588}
They promoted content under hashtags like #Beijing2022 and #TogetherForASharedFuture, this year’s official Olympic motto. Some accounts repeatedly posted tweets with identical wording, such as: “China’s hosting of the #Beijing2022 as scheduled has boosted the world’s confidence in defeating the pandemic.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9915159940719604}
Twitter said in an emailed statement that it had suspended hundreds of the accounts identified by The Times and ProPublica for violations of its platform manipulation and spam policies. It said it was continuing to investigate the accounts’ links to state-backed information operations. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9731966853141785}
Even the Games’ official mascot, Bing Dwen Dwen, a cuddly panda in a suit of ice, has been the subject of an organized campaign on Twitter, according to Albert Zhang, a researcher at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s International Cyber Policy Center. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8945740461349487}
Thousands of new or previously inactive accounts have helped the mascot go viral, he said — which China’s state media presented as evidence of the mascot’s popularity and, by extension, that of the Games. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5619786977767944}
“If you want to push out a lot of content on something like the Beijing Olympics, this is an easy way to do it,” Mr. Zhang said. He added that the campaign now underway was like others sponsored by the Chinese state to push Beijing’s narrative on topics such as Covid-19 and the crackdown on Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9237394332885742}
The information space inside China is not unlike the elaborate measures that have created the “closed loop” that keeps athletes, journalists and other participants strictly segregated from the general public. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6750468015670776}
Inside the “closed loop” of official propaganda, the state carefully curates almost anything ordinary Chinese people see or read. The effect has been an Olympics free of scandal or criticism or bad news. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5691590309143066}
When the United States men’s hockey team played an overmatched Chinese team, the game was not shown on the main state television sports channel, CCTV 5, and the 8-0 defeat was mentioned only glancingly in news reports. A state media slide show devoted to the men’s figure skating competition conspicuously omitted the gold medalist, Nathan Chen of the United States. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9884259700775146}
In Chinese footage of the Games, the mountains where many competitions are being held have been deftly framed to exclude the dry, brown slopes in the background, until Day 8 when a snowstorm covered them in a frosting of white. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.905663251876831}
One of the biggest political stories of these Games has also unfolded outside China’s internet firewall: the appearance of Peng Shuai, the professional tennis player and three-time Olympian who created a furor when she accused a senior Communist Party leader of sexually assaulting her. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8676552176475525}
The president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, met her for dinner, as he promised he would when the global outcry over her fate threatened to overshadow the Games. Ms. Peng has appeared at curling and figure skating, among other events. None of that was shown inside China, where all references to her accusations have been erased, including later statements attributed to her, saying she had been misunderstood. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9247949719429016}
“It’s absolutely critical to understand that this is not just another narrative,” Mr. Bandurski of the China Media Project said of the Olympics. “It’s a narrative that implies widespread censorship and the manipulation of public opinion, which is actually policy.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5739744305610657}
Jack Stubbs, vice president of intelligence at Graphika, a social media monitoring company, said his firm had observed another Chinese propaganda network using foreign social media platforms. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6897915005683899}
The network has spread videos emphasizing the Olympics as environmentally friendly and crooning about strengthening Chinese-Russian ties, punctuated by President Vladimir V. Putin’s attendance at the opening ceremony. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7060900330543518}
China has defended its use of Twitter and Facebook, platforms that it bans at home. A foreign ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, said last year that such sites were an “extra channel” to combat negative portrayals in the West. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9439497590065002}
One American company, Vippi Media, based in New Jersey, signed a $300,000 contract with the consulate general of China in New York to help promote the Games, according to the company’s filing with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.874495804309845}
Under the contract, first reported by the research group Open Secrets, the company has been promoting the Games by recruiting “social media stars” to post on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, the company’s founder, Vipinder Jaswal, said in a telephone interview. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.703767716884613}
“They were very clear and I was very clear that it’s about the Olympics and the Olympics only, nothing to do with politics,” he said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.2995181977748871}
Once the Games began, the drama of the sports themselves dominated attention. Protests over China’s human rights record have not materialized, as some activists hoped. On the contrary, many athletes have heaped praise.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8231651782989502}
“When you really meet the people here and talk to them,” Jenise Spiteri, the American snowboarder competing for Malta, said in a state media interview, “everyone has a very good heart.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7772222757339478}
Spicy Panda tweeted a state media report about another American competitor, the freestyle skier Aaron Blunck. In remarks posted by the official China Daily newspaper, Mr. Blunck praised China’s Covid protocols. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9805193543434143}
“#AaronBlunck revealed the real China that is totally different from what some American media have said!” Spicy Panda’s post read. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6716699004173279}

This article is published with ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative newsroom. Claim BEIJING — Inside the Potemkin village of China’s propaganda, the Winter Olympics have unfolded as an unalloyed success, a celebration of sports and political harmony that has obscured — critics say whitewashed — the country’s flaws and rights abuses. At Beijing 2022, the hills are snowy, not brown as usual this time of year. A Uyghur skier is the symbol of national unity, the tennis player Peng Shuai just a curious spectator. Athletes and foreign journalists praise the polite volunteers and marvel at the high-speed trains and the robots that boil dumplings and mix drinks. Evidence While China’s control of what its domestic viewers and readers consume is well established, the country has spread its own version of the Games beyond its borders, with an arsenal of digital tools that are giving China’s narrative arguably greater reach and more subtlety than ever before. Claim With bots, fake accounts, genuine influencers and other tools, China has been able to selectively edit how the events have appeared, even outside the country, promoting everything that bolsters the official, feel-good story about the Winter Olympics and trying to smother whatever doesn’t. “For the Chinese Communist Party, the Winter Olympics are inseparable from the broader political goal of building up the country’s national image,” said David Bandurski, director of the China Media Project, a monitoring organization. Referring to the country’s leader, he added: “This is what Xi Jinping has called ‘telling China’s story well.’” On Twitter, which is banned in China, Chinese state media outlets and journalists, as well as diplomats, have tried to buff the image of the Games, raving about venues and cooing over the Olympic mascot. China has also sought to influence online discussions in more concealed ways. The New York Times and ProPublica identified a network of more than 3,000 inauthentic-looking Twitter accounts that appeared to be coordinating to promote the Olympics by sharing state media posts with identical comments, for instance. Such accounts tended to be recently created with very few followers, tweeted mostly reposts and nothing of their own, and appeared to operate solely to amplify official Chinese voices. Some of their efforts have centered on an account called Spicy Panda, which has been posting cartoons and videos to push back against calls for a boycott of the Olympics. In one cartoon, Spicy Panda accused the United States of wielding “its deceiving propaganda weapon to stain the Olympics.” The tweet was reposted 281 times, all by the fake-looking accounts, but received little other engagement, a strong indication that the network was mobilized to promote the message. Aside from the bursts of promotion, Spicy Panda’s posts about the Olympics received almost no attention. An analysis of Spicy Panda’s supporters turned up 861 accounts — 90 percent of which were created after Dec. 1. The accounts’ first wave of coordinated posts pushed Beijing’s stance that Hong Kong’s legislative council elections were legitimate, though critics have called the vote a sham. Then the accounts turned their attention to the Olympics. (By Thursday, all but one of the accounts had been suspended, shortly after The Times and ProPublica asked Twitter about them.) Spicy Panda appears to have a connection with iChongqing, a state media-linked multimedia platform based in Chongqing, a city in central China. The accounts that shared Spicy Panda’s posts often did the same with tweets by iChongqing’s account. IChongqing did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Evidence Other botlike accounts promoted hashtags that seemed aimed at drowning out criticism of China, a hallmark of previous campaigns. Claim They promoted content under hashtags like #Beijing2022 and #TogetherForASharedFuture, this year’s official Olympic motto. Some accounts repeatedly posted tweets with identical wording, such as: “China’s hosting of the #Beijing2022 as scheduled has boosted the world’s confidence in defeating the pandemic.” Twitter said in an emailed statement that it had suspended hundreds of the accounts identified by The Times and ProPublica for violations of its platform manipulation and spam policies. It said it was continuing to investigate the accounts’ links to state-backed information operations. Even the Games’ official mascot, Bing Dwen Dwen, a cuddly panda in a suit of ice, has been the subject of an organized campaign on Twitter, according to Albert Zhang, a researcher at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s International Cyber Policy Center. Thousands of new or previously inactive accounts have helped the mascot go viral, he said — which China’s state media presented as evidence of the mascot’s popularity and, by extension, that of the Games. “If you want to push out a lot of content on something like the Beijing Olympics, this is an easy way to do it,” Mr. Zhang said. He added that the campaign now underway was like others sponsored by the Chinese state to push Beijing’s narrative on topics such as Covid-19 and the crackdown on Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. Evidence The information space inside China is not unlike the elaborate measures that have created the “closed loop” that keeps athletes, journalists and other participants strictly segregated from the general public. Claim Inside the “closed loop” of official propaganda, the state carefully curates almost anything ordinary Chinese people see or read. The effect has been an Olympics free of scandal or criticism or bad news. When the United States men’s hockey team played an overmatched Chinese team, the game was not shown on the main state television sports channel, CCTV 5, and the 8-0 defeat was mentioned only glancingly in news reports. A state media slide show devoted to the men’s figure skating competition conspicuously omitted the gold medalist, Nathan Chen of the United States. In Chinese footage of the Games, the mountains where many competitions are being held have been deftly framed to exclude the dry, brown slopes in the background, until Day 8 when a snowstorm covered them in a frosting of white. One of the biggest political stories of these Games has also unfolded outside China’s internet firewall: the appearance of Peng Shuai, the professional tennis player and three-time Olympian who created a furor when she accused a senior Communist Party leader of sexually assaulting her. The president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, met her for dinner, as he promised he would when the global outcry over her fate threatened to overshadow the Games. Ms. Peng has appeared at curling and figure skating, among other events. None of that was shown inside China, where all references to her accusations have been erased, including later statements attributed to her, saying she had been misunderstood. “It’s absolutely critical to understand that this is not just another narrative,” Mr. Bandurski of the China Media Project said of the Olympics. “It’s a narrative that implies widespread censorship and the manipulation of public opinion, which is actually policy.” Jack Stubbs, vice president of intelligence at Graphika, a social media monitoring company, said his firm had observed another Chinese propaganda network using foreign social media platforms. The network has spread videos emphasizing the Olympics as environmentally friendly and crooning about strengthening Chinese-Russian ties, punctuated by President Vladimir V. Putin’s attendance at the opening ceremony. China has defended its use of Twitter and Facebook, platforms that it bans at home. A foreign ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, said last year that such sites were an “extra channel” to combat negative portrayals in the West. One American company, Vippi Media, based in New Jersey, signed a $300,000 contract with the consulate general of China in New York to help promote the Games, according to the company’s filing with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Under the contract, first reported by the research group Open Secrets, the company has been promoting the Games by recruiting “social media stars” to post on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, the company’s founder, Vipinder Jaswal, said in a telephone interview. “They were very clear and I was very clear that it’s about the Olympics and the Olympics only, nothing to do with politics,” he said. Once the Games began, the drama of the sports themselves dominated attention. Protests over China’s human rights record have not materialized, as some activists hoped. On the contrary, many athletes have heaped praise. “When you really meet the people here and talk to them,” Jenise Spiteri, the American snowboarder competing for Malta, said in a state media interview, “everyone has a very good heart.” Spicy Panda tweeted a state media report about another American competitor, the freestyle skier Aaron Blunck. In remarks posted by the official China Daily newspaper, Mr. Blunck praised China’s Covid protocols. “#AaronBlunck revealed the real China that is totally different from what some American media have said!” Spicy Panda’s post read. Evidence

nytimes\china-us-tech-policy.txt

Using custom data configuration default-51dcca0881649558

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-51dcca0881649558\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

UnicodeDecodeError

nytimes\christopher-buckley-pj-orourke.txt

Using custom data configuration default-5718d36b4e51eeb2

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-5718d36b4e51eeb2\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-5718d36b4e51eeb2\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

“How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?” my friend P.J. O’Rourke asked me one less-than-sober evening years ago. The answer was “One — and that’s not funny!” {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.6709333062171936}
He was a fellow of infinite jest. I can scarcely recall, over the 40 years we were friends, P.J. saying anything that wasn’t funny. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5709294080734253}
Of all human failings, he found humorlessness the funniest. Back then, the political left was so earnest about saving the world that there was no room for laughter, which denoted a lack of earnestness. Self-deprecating humor, P.J.’s trademark, wasn’t allowed because it could undermine the mission. Saving the world was no laughing matter. One titter and the whole edifice could come crashing down. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7503572702407837}
Humorlessness has crept in its petty pace to the right, where it is conducted with North Korean-level solemnity by the bellowing myrmidons of MAGAdom. A sense of humor, much less self-awareness, are not traits found in cults of personality. If Tucker Carlson has said anything advertently funny, witty or self-knowing from his bully pulpit, I missed it. Maybe you had to be there. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9619588255882263}
P.J. O’Rourke’s death marks the end of a particular and an essential sensibility. He found humor everywhere and in everything, especially in his fellow Republicans. We’ve lost more than the man The Wall Street Journal called “the funniest writer in America.” We’ve lost the last funny conservative. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6660986542701721}
The boomer gen’s H.L. Mencken, P.J. was summa contra everything, but joyously. If you weren’t laughing, you weren’t listening. Along with his peers Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker, he was hyperaphoristic. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7385929226875305}
“The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything. The bad news is that, according to the Obama administration, you’re rich.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5839820504188538}
“If government were a product, selling it would be illegal.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8005877137184143}
“Rich people don’t like to be in the military. The shoes are ugly, and the uniforms itch. Rich people don’t go in much for revolution or terrorism, either.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7410663962364197}
“If you think health care is expensive now, wait until it’s free.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6666639447212219}
P.J. was a Serious Man — in the sense of what his forebear Mencken might call an ernst mann — who declined to take himself seriously. That’s not to say he lacked ego. (An egoless writer is the very definition of oxymoron.) But he reveled in his various poses — the entitled, whiny boomer; the stoner high school student; the uncultured bumpkin from Toledo, Ohio; the annoyed boozer who joins DAMM, Drunks Against Mad Mothers — as much as he did in the preposterousness of his targets. He was hugely erudite and deeply read. Like another of his paradigms, Tom Wolfe, he had no illusions that he was anything more than just another player in la comédie humaine. A firm belief in human fallibility is an essential element of the conservative temperament. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9709479808807373}
P.J. wasn’t the only conservative pundit to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but he didn’t try to spray Febreze on his ballot. He voted with clothespin firmly affixed to his nose. Mrs. Clinton, he said, was wrong “about absolutely everything,” except in one regard: She wasn’t Donald Trump. “Politics,” as he’d written, “is a necessary evil, or a necessary annoyance, or a necessary conundrum.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9709072113037109}
The Trump era could have been one great big enormous sandbox for P.J. to play in. Instead, he found it dispiriting, a pageant of stupidity, boorishness and coarseness. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5555312633514404}
His last book, “A Cry From the Far Middle: Dispatches From a Divided Land,” published in 2021, shows him in top form, but in it there’s a note of wistfulness. The last time I visited with him, he told me, “You know, I’ve been doing this for a [expletive] half century. I’m tired.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7193052768707275}
The weariness didn’t show. Now that he’s gone, the proverbial baton is passed to a new generation of conservative satirists, specifically Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Marjorie Taylor Greene. And that isn’t funny. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6296671628952026}

“How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?” my friend P.J. O’Rourke asked me one less-than-sober evening years ago. The answer was “One — and that’s not funny!” Lead He was a fellow of infinite jest. I can scarcely recall, over the 40 years we were friends, P.J. saying anything that wasn’t funny. Of all human failings, he found humorlessness the funniest. Back then, the political left was so earnest about saving the world that there was no room for laughter, which denoted a lack of earnestness. Self-deprecating humor, P.J.’s trademark, wasn’t allowed because it could undermine the mission. Saving the world was no laughing matter. One titter and the whole edifice could come crashing down. Humorlessness has crept in its petty pace to the right, where it is conducted with North Korean-level solemnity by the bellowing myrmidons of MAGAdom. A sense of humor, much less self-awareness, are not traits found in cults of personality. If Tucker Carlson has said anything advertently funny, witty or self-knowing from his bully pulpit, I missed it. Maybe you had to be there. P.J. O’Rourke’s death marks the end of a particular and an essential sensibility. He found humor everywhere and in everything, especially in his fellow Republicans. We’ve lost more than the man The Wall Street Journal called “the funniest writer in America.” We’ve lost the last funny conservative. The boomer gen’s H.L. Mencken, P.J. was summa contra everything, but joyously. If you weren’t laughing, you weren’t listening. Along with his peers Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker, he was hyperaphoristic. “The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything. The bad news is that, according to the Obama administration, you’re rich.” Evidence “If government were a product, selling it would be illegal.” Claim “Rich people don’t like to be in the military. The shoes are ugly, and the uniforms itch. Rich people don’t go in much for revolution or terrorism, either.” Evidence “If you think health care is expensive now, wait until it’s free.” Claim P.J. was a Serious Man — in the sense of what his forebear Mencken might call an ernst mann — who declined to take himself seriously. That’s not to say he lacked ego. (An egoless writer is the very definition of oxymoron.) But he reveled in his various poses — the entitled, whiny boomer; the stoner high school student; the uncultured bumpkin from Toledo, Ohio; the annoyed boozer who joins DAMM, Drunks Against Mad Mothers — as much as he did in the preposterousness of his targets. He was hugely erudite and deeply read. Like another of his paradigms, Tom Wolfe, he had no illusions that he was anything more than just another player in la comédie humaine. A firm belief in human fallibility is an essential element of the conservative temperament. P.J. wasn’t the only conservative pundit to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but he didn’t try to spray Febreze on his ballot. He voted with clothespin firmly affixed to his nose. Mrs. Clinton, he said, was wrong “about absolutely everything,” except in one regard: She wasn’t Donald Trump. “Politics,” as he’d written, “is a necessary evil, or a necessary annoyance, or a necessary conundrum.” The Trump era could have been one great big enormous sandbox for P.J. to play in. Instead, he found it dispiriting, a pageant of stupidity, boorishness and coarseness. His last book, “A Cry From the Far Middle: Dispatches From a Divided Land,” published in 2021, shows him in top form, but in it there’s a note of wistfulness. The last time I visited with him, he told me, “You know, I’ve been doing this for a [expletive] half century. I’m tired.” The weariness didn’t show. Now that he’s gone, the proverbial baton is passed to a new generation of conservative satirists, specifically Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Marjorie Taylor Greene. And that isn’t funny. Evidence

nytimes\civil-suits-trump-jan-6.txt

Using custom data configuration default-091ae9753f5bffc0

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-091ae9753f5bffc0\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-091ae9753f5bffc0\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

A federal judge in Washington ruled on Friday that three civil lawsuits against Donald J. Trump related to the attack on the Capitol last January were able to move forward, saying that the former president was not shielded by the normal protections of immunity or the First Amendment. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7737302780151367}
The ruling by the judge, Amit P. Mehta, meant that the plaintiffs in the suits — several members of Congress and police officers who served at the Capitol during the attack — will likely be able to seek information from Mr. Trump about the specific role he played in fostering the chaos at the building on Jan. 6, 2021. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.73347407579422}
If ultimately found liable, Mr. Trump could also be on the hook for financial damages. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7635857462882996}
Judge Mehta’s order capped a difficult week for Mr. Trump, one in which a judge in New York ruled that he had to answer questions from state investigators examining his company, the Trump Organization, for evidence of fraud. Officials at the National Archives also said that Mr. Trump had taken classified national security documents from the White House to his private club in Florida. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9741902351379395}
The lawsuits, all of which were filed last year, accused Mr. Trump of overlapping charges of conspiring with several others — people like his lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, his son Donald Trump Jr. and extremist groups such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers militia — to sow doubts about the 2020 election, culminating in the violent storming of the Capitol. Judge Mehta allowed the suits to go ahead against the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, but dismissed them against Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Trump’s son. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9723252654075623}
Judge Mehta ruled that he would consider — and likely grant — a motion to dismiss from another defendant in one of the cases, Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama. Instead of moving to dismiss, Mr. Brooks had asked Judge Mehta to allow him to substitute the federal government in his place as the defendant in the case. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8200256824493408}
At a nearly five-hour hearing last month, Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued he was immune from being sued because he had been acting in his official role as president when he addressed a huge crowd in Washington at the Ellipse before the Capitol was breached. The lawyers also claimed that Mr. Trump’s incendiary speech, one in which he urged the crowd to “fight like hell,” but also cautioned them to be peaceful and patriotic, should be protected by the First Amendment. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9584894776344299}
But in his 112-page order, Judge Mehta ruled that Mr. Trump’s actions that day had little to do with normal presidential duties like executing laws or commanding the armed forces and instead concerned something more personal: what the judge called Mr. Trump’s “efforts to remain in office for a second term.” {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.864403486251831}
“To deny a president immunity from civil damages is no small step,” Judge Mehta wrote. “The court well understands the gravity of its decision. But the alleged facts of this case are without precedent.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5879255533218384}
The judge also found that after months of creating an “air of distrust and anger” by relentlessly claiming the election had been stolen, Mr. Trump should have known his supporters would take his speech not merely as words, but as “a call to action.” For that reason, the judge decided, the address was not “protected expression.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7366859316825867}
Mr. Trump “invited his supporters to Washington, D.C., after telling them for months that corrupt and spineless politicians were to blame for stealing an election from them; retold that narrative when thousands of them assembled on the Ellipse; and directed them to march on the Capitol building,” Judge Mehta wrote. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9545826315879822}
Each of the suits was based in part on a Reconstruction era law known as the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, originally intended to protect former slaves from abuse by local officials but became a vehicle for challenging official actions more broadly. The suits, which seek civil damages, are separate from the Justice Department’s sprawling investigation into hundreds of people who took part in the storming of the Capitol and from a parallel congressional investigation into machinations by Mr. Trump and others to overturn the election results in the weeks and months leading up to Jan. 6. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.972567081451416}
To date, Mr. Trump has not faced a subpoena from either the Justice Department or the House committee investigating the Capitol riot. But the ruling on Friday created the likelihood that Mr. Trump would have to provide documents to the plaintiffs or even sit for a deposition. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8674426078796387}
“Above all else, it’s about accountability,” said Joseph Sellers, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs. Representatives for Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6245081424713135}
While most of the accusations in the suits came from Justice Department court filings or from publicly available information, Judge Mehta highlighted a few allegations in his ruling in particular. He wrote, for instance, that Mr. Trump’s former close adviser, Roger J. Stone Jr., may have served as the link between the former president and extremist groups. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8799528479576111}
Judge Mehta pointed out that shortly after Mr. Stone posted on social media in December 2020 that he had met with Mr. Trump to “ensure” that he “continues as our president,” he also with spoke with Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys at the time. The judge also noted that Mr. Stone was guarded on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6 by members of the Oath Keepers. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9479002356529236}
Much of Judge Mehta’s ruling was dedicated to analyzing Mr. Trump’s 75-minute speech at the Ellipse, one in which Mr. Trump and his audience seemed to be engaged in a kind of back-and-forth. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.45681068301200867}
The speech, Judge Mehta wrote, showed “a call-and-response quality to the president’s communications, of which the president would have been aware.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6133965849876404}
“The complaints contain numerous examples of the president’s communications being understood by supporters as direct messages to them,” he added, “and, in the case of the January 6 Rally, as a call to action.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6127121448516846}

A federal judge in Washington ruled on Friday that three civil lawsuits against Donald J. Trump related to the attack on the Capitol last January were able to move forward, saying that the former president was not shielded by the normal protections of immunity or the First Amendment. The ruling by the judge, Amit P. Mehta, meant that the plaintiffs in the suits — several members of Congress and police officers who served at the Capitol during the attack — will likely be able to seek information from Mr. Trump about the specific role he played in fostering the chaos at the building on Jan. 6, 2021. Evidence If ultimately found liable, Mr. Trump could also be on the hook for financial damages. Claim Judge Mehta’s order capped a difficult week for Mr. Trump, one in which a judge in New York ruled that he had to answer questions from state investigators examining his company, the Trump Organization, for evidence of fraud. Officials at the National Archives also said that Mr. Trump had taken classified national security documents from the White House to his private club in Florida. The lawsuits, all of which were filed last year, accused Mr. Trump of overlapping charges of conspiring with several others — people like his lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, his son Donald Trump Jr. and extremist groups such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers militia — to sow doubts about the 2020 election, culminating in the violent storming of the Capitol. Judge Mehta allowed the suits to go ahead against the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, but dismissed them against Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Trump’s son. Judge Mehta ruled that he would consider — and likely grant — a motion to dismiss from another defendant in one of the cases, Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama. Instead of moving to dismiss, Mr. Brooks had asked Judge Mehta to allow him to substitute the federal government in his place as the defendant in the case. At a nearly five-hour hearing last month, Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued he was immune from being sued because he had been acting in his official role as president when he addressed a huge crowd in Washington at the Ellipse before the Capitol was breached. The lawyers also claimed that Mr. Trump’s incendiary speech, one in which he urged the crowd to “fight like hell,” but also cautioned them to be peaceful and patriotic, should be protected by the First Amendment. Evidence But in his 112-page order, Judge Mehta ruled that Mr. Trump’s actions that day had little to do with normal presidential duties like executing laws or commanding the armed forces and instead concerned something more personal: what the judge called Mr. Trump’s “efforts to remain in office for a second term.” Rebuttal “To deny a president immunity from civil damages is no small step,” Judge Mehta wrote. “The court well understands the gravity of its decision. But the alleged facts of this case are without precedent.” The judge also found that after months of creating an “air of distrust and anger” by relentlessly claiming the election had been stolen, Mr. Trump should have known his supporters would take his speech not merely as words, but as “a call to action.” For that reason, the judge decided, the address was not “protected expression.” Mr. Trump “invited his supporters to Washington, D.C., after telling them for months that corrupt and spineless politicians were to blame for stealing an election from them; retold that narrative when thousands of them assembled on the Ellipse; and directed them to march on the Capitol building,” Judge Mehta wrote. Each of the suits was based in part on a Reconstruction era law known as the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, originally intended to protect former slaves from abuse by local officials but became a vehicle for challenging official actions more broadly. The suits, which seek civil damages, are separate from the Justice Department’s sprawling investigation into hundreds of people who took part in the storming of the Capitol and from a parallel congressional investigation into machinations by Mr. Trump and others to overturn the election results in the weeks and months leading up to Jan. 6. To date, Mr. Trump has not faced a subpoena from either the Justice Department or the House committee investigating the Capitol riot. But the ruling on Friday created the likelihood that Mr. Trump would have to provide documents to the plaintiffs or even sit for a deposition. “Above all else, it’s about accountability,” said Joseph Sellers, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs. Representatives for Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment. While most of the accusations in the suits came from Justice Department court filings or from publicly available information, Judge Mehta highlighted a few allegations in his ruling in particular. He wrote, for instance, that Mr. Trump’s former close adviser, Roger J. Stone Jr., may have served as the link between the former president and extremist groups. Judge Mehta pointed out that shortly after Mr. Stone posted on social media in December 2020 that he had met with Mr. Trump to “ensure” that he “continues as our president,” he also with spoke with Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys at the time. The judge also noted that Mr. Stone was guarded on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6 by members of the Oath Keepers. Evidence Much of Judge Mehta’s ruling was dedicated to analyzing Mr. Trump’s 75-minute speech at the Ellipse, one in which Mr. Trump and his audience seemed to be engaged in a kind of back-and-forth. The speech, Judge Mehta wrote, showed “a call-and-response quality to the president’s communications, of which the president would have been aware.” Claim “The complaints contain numerous examples of the president’s communications being understood by supporters as direct messages to them,” he added, “and, in the case of the January 6 Rally, as a call to action.” Evidence

nytimes\comedy-jewish-identity.txt

Using custom data configuration default-a4caf305c7cc0857

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-a4caf305c7cc0857\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-a4caf305c7cc0857\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5785791277885437}
In the climactic scene of the musical “Caroline, or Change,” an 8-year-old Jewish boy, Noah, and his African American maid, Caroline, living in the Jim Crow South, get into a heated fight and end up trading ugly insults. Noah says he hopes a bomb kills all Black people, and Caroline responds that all Jews will go to hell. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9518237113952637}
It’s always a charged moment, but there was something peculiarly unsettling about it the night I saw the recent Broadway revival. For while there was silence after Noah’s hateful outburst, what followed Caroline’s comment was something I did not expect: laughter. Nervous giggling in uncomfortable moments can be a coping mechanism. And that wasn’t the audience reaction every night. But in a radio interview, Sharon D Clarke, who played the title character, said that at the majority of shows, there was laughter. She was disturbed by it but couldn’t explain it. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9649516344070435}
I found it jarring because I thought I could. Of course it’s impossible to get inside the heads of theatergoers, but as a Jewish person, I recognized this laughter. Who would buy a ticket to a Broadway show and chuckle at the eternal damnation of Jewish people other than Jews? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6972895264625549}
There is a long, rich Jewish tradition of grappling with antisemitism by laughing at it. This has produced a vast amount of great comedy, from Mel Brooks turning Nazis into musical theater buffoons in “The Producers” to Sacha Baron Cohen, in character as Borat, leading the denizens of a Southern bar in singing, “Throw the Jew down the well.” There is a sensibility behind these jokes that I grew up around and have long embraced. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9287457466125488}
Some artists argue that making light of prejudice, or turning purveyors of it into absurdities, robs hatred of power. I’ve been persuaded by that idea, and like many secular types, a Jewish sense of humor is more integral to my identity than any religious observance. It’s also a source of pride. A resilient comic sensibility that finds joy in dark places is one of the greatest Jewish legacies — as is an ability to laugh at ourselves. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.5973190665245056}
Those hung up on the question of whether the latest news is good for the Jews always seemed not only hopelessly ineffective but also tedious. Scolds from the Anti-Defamation League, alert to the damage done by every Jewish stereotype, will never end an ancient prejudice, but they could ruin a good time. And yet, as a critic engaging with a chaotic and constantly changing culture, in an online world that seems somehow both more outraged by and tolerant of hate speech, I am increasingly uncomfortable with this kind of condescension. It’s too glib. And that has made me look closer at the disturbing rise in antisemitism today, Jewish culture and identity, and the implications of what we find funny. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8125002980232239}
THERE’S BEEN GROWING PUSHBACK in the last year from some Jews about double standards in the cultural conversation. Take the increasingly politicized issue of casting, which has inspired considerable controversy. We have never been more sensitive to issues of whitewashing, appropriation and representation. Think of Scarlett Johansson being hired for an Asian role. But when gentiles are cast as Golda Meir or Mrs. Maisel or Ruth Bader Ginsburg, there is little blowback. The superb indie comedy “Shiva Baby” tackles explicitly Jewish themes, but the fact that the lead is played by a Catholic stand-up, Rachel Sennott, barely raised an eyebrow. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7978819012641907}
On her podcast, Sarah Silverman has spoken passionately about how Jewish characters are regularly played by gentile actors, specifically lamenting the lack of meaty roles for women. “The pattern in film is just undeniable,” she said, “and the pattern is — if the Jewish woman character is courageous or deserves love, she is never played by a Jew.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6490141749382019}
She delivered this sharp monologue with an ambivalence that also resonated with me. Acting requires an empathetic leap of imagination. Like Silverman, I know that great performers of any religion can and have brilliantly played Jews, and it’s easier to pass as Jewish than, say, African American. But is experience as a Jewish person irrelevant to playing Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof” (as Alfred Molina, who was raised Catholic, did on Broadway) or to embodying Joan Rivers in a biopic? (Before the project fell apart, the gentile Kathryn Hahn was slated to play her.) I think it matters. When a gentile plays a Jew, the results are often more affected, the mannerisms pronounced, which can often mean the difference between someone playing Jewish vs. inhabiting a Jewish character. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.968788743019104}
In his book “Jews Don’t Count,” the British comic David Baddiel argues that casting is one of many issues in contemporary discourse that illustrate how antisemitism is far more acceptable than other forms of bigotry. One need only point to the career of Mel Gibson to find evidence. Part of the reason, Baddiel explains, is that at a time when we are particularly sensitive to power imbalances, what distinguishes antisemitism is that the bigot imagines Jewish people as both low status (rats, venal) and high status (running the banks, part of a globalist conspiracy). {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9437459707260132}
Jewish people have clearly been tremendously successful in Hollywood, on Broadway and in comedy, among other artistic pursuits, but that doesn’t erase the specific discriminatory shadow hovering behind their rise. Silverman points to the number of famous Jews who have changed their names. “If Winona Ryder had stayed Winona Horowitz, would she have starred in ‘The Age of Innocence’?” Silverman has asked. “She wouldn’t.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9400433897972107}
Behind the discussion of gentiles in Jewish roles is the long history of Hollywood anxiety that a work will be “too Jewish,” words that have haunted Jewish artists for generations. The first time Jerry Seinfeld appeared on a sitcom, on “Benson” in 1980, he played a courier trying to sell a joke for the governor to use in a speech. When one flopped (“Did you hear about the rabbi who bought himself a ranch? Called it the Bar Mitzvah”), he asked: “Too Jewish?” Nine years later, a Jewish NBC executive dismissed the pilot for “Seinfeld” as “too New York, too Jewish,” and while it was picked up, the network ordered only four episodes. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9854996204376221}
In the most memorable joke of his breakthrough 1986 Broadway comedy, “The World According to Me,” the comic Jackie Mason said, “You know what’s going to happen after this show: The gentiles are going to say, ‘It’s a hit.’ And the Jews are going to say, ‘Too Jewish.’” Mason delivers this cheerfully, but there’s a bristling undercurrent, a finger wag about self-loathing. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9181640148162842}
Mason has always been a kind of guilty pleasure for me. Compared with my favorite comics, he seemed impossibly old-fashioned, not just in his borscht belt rhythms, but also in having bits centered on how fundamentally alien gentiles were to Jews. But listening to him again more recently, I detected a defiance that was, in its own way, radical, even countercultural. His accent itself, which if anything got thicker as he got older, represented a bold refusal to assimilate. The Jewish artists who found mainstream success didn’t sound like him. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9692604541778564}
And when he died last year, with a modest amount of media attention paid to his legacy, it made me wonder about the obstacle course of Jewish success in a country where we are a tiny minority. But I also thought about the role played by Jewish people measuring the degree of acceptable Jewishness, the kind Mason was talking about in his show. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9791923761367798}
WHEN REPRESENTATION IN CULTURE is discussed today, what’s often emphasized is how valuable it can be when children from minority groups see or hear someone like them and how that can expand their horizons. I have never felt this was an issue for me, because there seemed to be an abundance of Jewish people in the arts. Sure, some changed their names or played down their background, but we could tell. I never questioned the idea that Jews had been well represented in popular culture until I read Jeremy Dauber’s book “Jewish Comedy: A Serious History” and learned that not one leading character on prime-time television clearly identified as Jewish from 1954 to 1972 and again from 1978 to 1987. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8004509806632996}
That came as a surprise and made me reconsider my 1980s childhood diet of pop culture. Back then, this mainly consisted of the offerings of three television networks, along with the occasional PG movie. This was the era of “The Cosby Show” and “Family Ties,” and I couldn’t think of a single Jewish character on a show I watched until I became a teenager. But a major shift for Jewish representation took place in 1989. That’s when “Seinfeld,” “Anything but Love” with Richard Lewis and “Chicken Soup” with Mason all premiered. (It’s also the year of “When Harry Met Sally.”) What’s striking about this influx of Jewish characters is that only one kind was allowed: A male stand-up with a gentile love interest. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9895272254943848}
In order to not be too Jewish in the popular culture of my youth, you had to be a funny man interested in someone from another background. For a funny Jewish woman, you had to wait until “The Nanny.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8775681257247925}
How much did it matter that as a boy I saw no Jewish couples on television? I’m not certain — draw your own conclusions about the fact that I married a non-Jew. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.40317150950431824}
But one thing I surely developed as a young Jewish culture vulture were the tools to enjoy work by antisemites. The most formative artists I loved as a kid, from Roald Dahl to Ice Cube to H.P. Lovecraft, have track records of hateful comments toward Jews. I knew this even then. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.568310558795929}
Once I got older, and studying Shakespeare led to a lifelong love of theater, I never thought, as many do, that the greatness and humanity of the playwright’s characterizations transcended his portrait of Shylock in the antisemitic classic “The Merchant of Venice.” But I also found tossing aside this incredible play because of it an overreaction. To be a young Jew hungry for and alert to the best of culture sometimes meant learning to live with some antisemitism. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8830594420433044}
To be honest, this wasn’t hard. I have never felt impeded or defined by prejudice against Jews, even though I could certainly tell a version of my life that would seem like it. I have a laundry list of what are now known as microaggressions, from a childhood friend who refused to believe I was Jewish and then stopped hanging out with me to a comic online dismissing my positive review because the subject was Jewish. But these didn’t traumatize or even faze me. This is not a boast. If anything, only recently have I questioned the downside of not lingering on these events. Has a coping mechanism prevented me from seeing the world clearly? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7245093584060669}
Of course, one reason some Jews don’t make a bigger fuss about discrimination, one reason they feel comfortable laughing at it, is that they — we — feel safe. It’s easier to laugh at antisemitism when it happens in an unthreatening place. The feeling is: There are worse problems in the world. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7445017695426941}
In her acclaimed book “People Love Dead Jews,” Dara Horn takes fierce aim at this blasé attitude, at the downplaying and rationalizations that Jewish Americans make, whether it’s the strained lengths intellectuals go to to argue that Shakespeare transcended bigotry in his portrayal of Shylock or to take comfort in the story of Anne Frank’s faith in the goodness of people (before bad people killed her). {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.575104832649231}
Horn’s bracing argument is that there is a cost to denial, that the rise of antisemitic incidents and hate crimes against Jews — including the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh — is directly tied to the fading of the stigma of bigotry against Jews. Hatred of Jews is not unusual, she argues; it’s the years after the Holocaust when that was socially unacceptable that were the anomaly. “Historically speaking, the decades in which my parents and I had grown up simply hadn’t been normal,” writes Horn. Now, she writes, normal is back. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5452762246131897}
For Jews like myself with family photos featuring relatives murdered in the Holocaust, this point stopped me cold. There are signs of a new, more sober attitude toward antisemitism among younger Jewish artists. The 26-year-old Hannah Einbinder, who has integrated a long Hebrew prayer into her stand-up set, has said she stayed off Twitter in part because of antisemitism and always wears a Star of David necklace for political reasons. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9923277497291565}
The comic Alex Edelman, 32, built his extremely funny Off Broadway show “Just for Us” around visiting a white nationalist meeting in Queens, having conversations with antisemites that eventually culminate in confrontation. His show is pointedly pessimistic about the ability of comedy to combat bigotry. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8737335801124573}
AS I MULLED OVER THE TENSION between the twin Jewish traditions of being on guard against antisemitism and of finding humor in it, I thought back to my first adult job, as a copy editor at the Jewish newspaper The Forward in the late 1990s. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.48228323459625244}
One of my responsibilities was typing the hard-copy letters to the editor into the computer system, and in filing one from a woman offering feedback on a story about Hebrew schools, I made a typo. What she wrote in reference to her childhood peers was: “We knew exactly why Micah told us first to do justice, then to love mercy.” In a catastrophic mistake, I transcribed it as: “first to do justice, then to love money.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9798893332481384}
It didn’t take long before I was summoned to the editor’s office and fired. My first reaction was shock and panic. What will I do now? How will I pay the rent? But upon reflection, what stands out is how quickly my anxiety transformed into a kind of delight. I lost a job but gained a terrifically funny story that I would surely tell for years. And I did. It has gotten a ton of laughs. Long before social media, my story went viral offline, so much so that someone told it to me at a party not knowing it was about me. In my version, the woman who wrote the letter and the editor who fired me were guilty of a ridiculous overreaction to an honest mistake. Couldn’t they just laugh it off? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9681848287582397}
In 2014, after a Pew study revealed that 42 percent of American Jews described having a good sense of humor as “essential” to being Jewish (more than twice as many as those who cited “Observing Jewish Law”), The Forward asked me to return to speak to its editorial board about comedy. In exchange, I asked if I could find the letter with my typo from the archives. I made a copy, framed it and put it above my desk. More recently, I took it down and put it in a file. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9826922416687012}
I wish I could say that considering these issues has led to a dramatic epiphany, that it has radically changed me as a critic and a Jew. That would make for a better ending to this essay. But the truth is that I remain ambivalent, as uncomfortable with being defined by prejudice as with ignoring it, living up to the stereotype of the neurotic Jew. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.6480562686920166}
Though I still find that story of being fired to be funny, now the outraged response doesn’t seem ridiculous. Joking about dark things is one of the great joys in life. But some laughs should stick in your throat. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3489997386932373}

To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android. Claim In the climactic scene of the musical “Caroline, or Change,” an 8-year-old Jewish boy, Noah, and his African American maid, Caroline, living in the Jim Crow South, get into a heated fight and end up trading ugly insults. Noah says he hopes a bomb kills all Black people, and Caroline responds that all Jews will go to hell. It’s always a charged moment, but there was something peculiarly unsettling about it the night I saw the recent Broadway revival. For while there was silence after Noah’s hateful outburst, what followed Caroline’s comment was something I did not expect: laughter. Nervous giggling in uncomfortable moments can be a coping mechanism. And that wasn’t the audience reaction every night. But in a radio interview, Sharon D Clarke, who played the title character, said that at the majority of shows, there was laughter. She was disturbed by it but couldn’t explain it. I found it jarring because I thought I could. Of course it’s impossible to get inside the heads of theatergoers, but as a Jewish person, I recognized this laughter. Who would buy a ticket to a Broadway show and chuckle at the eternal damnation of Jewish people other than Jews? There is a long, rich Jewish tradition of grappling with antisemitism by laughing at it. This has produced a vast amount of great comedy, from Mel Brooks turning Nazis into musical theater buffoons in “The Producers” to Sacha Baron Cohen, in character as Borat, leading the denizens of a Southern bar in singing, “Throw the Jew down the well.” There is a sensibility behind these jokes that I grew up around and have long embraced. Evidence Some artists argue that making light of prejudice, or turning purveyors of it into absurdities, robs hatred of power. I’ve been persuaded by that idea, and like many secular types, a Jewish sense of humor is more integral to my identity than any religious observance. It’s also a source of pride. A resilient comic sensibility that finds joy in dark places is one of the greatest Jewish legacies — as is an ability to laugh at ourselves. Counterclaim Those hung up on the question of whether the latest news is good for the Jews always seemed not only hopelessly ineffective but also tedious. Scolds from the Anti-Defamation League, alert to the damage done by every Jewish stereotype, will never end an ancient prejudice, but they could ruin a good time. And yet, as a critic engaging with a chaotic and constantly changing culture, in an online world that seems somehow both more outraged by and tolerant of hate speech, I am increasingly uncomfortable with this kind of condescension. It’s too glib. And that has made me look closer at the disturbing rise in antisemitism today, Jewish culture and identity, and the implications of what we find funny. THERE’S BEEN GROWING PUSHBACK in the last year from some Jews about double standards in the cultural conversation. Take the increasingly politicized issue of casting, which has inspired considerable controversy. We have never been more sensitive to issues of whitewashing, appropriation and representation. Think of Scarlett Johansson being hired for an Asian role. But when gentiles are cast as Golda Meir or Mrs. Maisel or Ruth Bader Ginsburg, there is little blowback. The superb indie comedy “Shiva Baby” tackles explicitly Jewish themes, but the fact that the lead is played by a Catholic stand-up, Rachel Sennott, barely raised an eyebrow. On her podcast, Sarah Silverman has spoken passionately about how Jewish characters are regularly played by gentile actors, specifically lamenting the lack of meaty roles for women. “The pattern in film is just undeniable,” she said, “and the pattern is — if the Jewish woman character is courageous or deserves love, she is never played by a Jew.” She delivered this sharp monologue with an ambivalence that also resonated with me. Acting requires an empathetic leap of imagination. Like Silverman, I know that great performers of any religion can and have brilliantly played Jews, and it’s easier to pass as Jewish than, say, African American. But is experience as a Jewish person irrelevant to playing Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof” (as Alfred Molina, who was raised Catholic, did on Broadway) or to embodying Joan Rivers in a biopic? (Before the project fell apart, the gentile Kathryn Hahn was slated to play her.) I think it matters. When a gentile plays a Jew, the results are often more affected, the mannerisms pronounced, which can often mean the difference between someone playing Jewish vs. inhabiting a Jewish character. In his book “Jews Don’t Count,” the British comic David Baddiel argues that casting is one of many issues in contemporary discourse that illustrate how antisemitism is far more acceptable than other forms of bigotry. One need only point to the career of Mel Gibson to find evidence. Part of the reason, Baddiel explains, is that at a time when we are particularly sensitive to power imbalances, what distinguishes antisemitism is that the bigot imagines Jewish people as both low status (rats, venal) and high status (running the banks, part of a globalist conspiracy). Jewish people have clearly been tremendously successful in Hollywood, on Broadway and in comedy, among other artistic pursuits, but that doesn’t erase the specific discriminatory shadow hovering behind their rise. Silverman points to the number of famous Jews who have changed their names. “If Winona Ryder had stayed Winona Horowitz, would she have starred in ‘The Age of Innocence’?” Silverman has asked. “She wouldn’t.” Behind the discussion of gentiles in Jewish roles is the long history of Hollywood anxiety that a work will be “too Jewish,” words that have haunted Jewish artists for generations. The first time Jerry Seinfeld appeared on a sitcom, on “Benson” in 1980, he played a courier trying to sell a joke for the governor to use in a speech. When one flopped (“Did you hear about the rabbi who bought himself a ranch? Called it the Bar Mitzvah”), he asked: “Too Jewish?” Nine years later, a Jewish NBC executive dismissed the pilot for “Seinfeld” as “too New York, too Jewish,” and while it was picked up, the network ordered only four episodes. In the most memorable joke of his breakthrough 1986 Broadway comedy, “The World According to Me,” the comic Jackie Mason said, “You know what’s going to happen after this show: The gentiles are going to say, ‘It’s a hit.’ And the Jews are going to say, ‘Too Jewish.’” Mason delivers this cheerfully, but there’s a bristling undercurrent, a finger wag about self-loathing. Mason has always been a kind of guilty pleasure for me. Compared with my favorite comics, he seemed impossibly old-fashioned, not just in his borscht belt rhythms, but also in having bits centered on how fundamentally alien gentiles were to Jews. But listening to him again more recently, I detected a defiance that was, in its own way, radical, even countercultural. His accent itself, which if anything got thicker as he got older, represented a bold refusal to assimilate. The Jewish artists who found mainstream success didn’t sound like him. And when he died last year, with a modest amount of media attention paid to his legacy, it made me wonder about the obstacle course of Jewish success in a country where we are a tiny minority. But I also thought about the role played by Jewish people measuring the degree of acceptable Jewishness, the kind Mason was talking about in his show. WHEN REPRESENTATION IN CULTURE is discussed today, what’s often emphasized is how valuable it can be when children from minority groups see or hear someone like them and how that can expand their horizons. I have never felt this was an issue for me, because there seemed to be an abundance of Jewish people in the arts. Sure, some changed their names or played down their background, but we could tell. I never questioned the idea that Jews had been well represented in popular culture until I read Jeremy Dauber’s book “Jewish Comedy: A Serious History” and learned that not one leading character on prime-time television clearly identified as Jewish from 1954 to 1972 and again from 1978 to 1987. That came as a surprise and made me reconsider my 1980s childhood diet of pop culture. Back then, this mainly consisted of the offerings of three television networks, along with the occasional PG movie. This was the era of “The Cosby Show” and “Family Ties,” and I couldn’t think of a single Jewish character on a show I watched until I became a teenager. But a major shift for Jewish representation took place in 1989. That’s when “Seinfeld,” “Anything but Love” with Richard Lewis and “Chicken Soup” with Mason all premiered. (It’s also the year of “When Harry Met Sally.”) What’s striking about this influx of Jewish characters is that only one kind was allowed: A male stand-up with a gentile love interest. In order to not be too Jewish in the popular culture of my youth, you had to be a funny man interested in someone from another background. For a funny Jewish woman, you had to wait until “The Nanny.” How much did it matter that as a boy I saw no Jewish couples on television? I’m not certain — draw your own conclusions about the fact that I married a non-Jew. Evidence But one thing I surely developed as a young Jewish culture vulture were the tools to enjoy work by antisemites. The most formative artists I loved as a kid, from Roald Dahl to Ice Cube to H.P. Lovecraft, have track records of hateful comments toward Jews. I knew this even then. Rebuttal Once I got older, and studying Shakespeare led to a lifelong love of theater, I never thought, as many do, that the greatness and humanity of the playwright’s characterizations transcended his portrait of Shylock in the antisemitic classic “The Merchant of Venice.” But I also found tossing aside this incredible play because of it an overreaction. To be a young Jew hungry for and alert to the best of culture sometimes meant learning to live with some antisemitism. To be honest, this wasn’t hard. I have never felt impeded or defined by prejudice against Jews, even though I could certainly tell a version of my life that would seem like it. I have a laundry list of what are now known as microaggressions, from a childhood friend who refused to believe I was Jewish and then stopped hanging out with me to a comic online dismissing my positive review because the subject was Jewish. But these didn’t traumatize or even faze me. This is not a boast. If anything, only recently have I questioned the downside of not lingering on these events. Has a coping mechanism prevented me from seeing the world clearly? Of course, one reason some Jews don’t make a bigger fuss about discrimination, one reason they feel comfortable laughing at it, is that they — we — feel safe. It’s easier to laugh at antisemitism when it happens in an unthreatening place. The feeling is: There are worse problems in the world. In her acclaimed book “People Love Dead Jews,” Dara Horn takes fierce aim at this blasé attitude, at the downplaying and rationalizations that Jewish Americans make, whether it’s the strained lengths intellectuals go to to argue that Shakespeare transcended bigotry in his portrayal of Shylock or to take comfort in the story of Anne Frank’s faith in the goodness of people (before bad people killed her). Horn’s bracing argument is that there is a cost to denial, that the rise of antisemitic incidents and hate crimes against Jews — including the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh — is directly tied to the fading of the stigma of bigotry against Jews. Hatred of Jews is not unusual, she argues; it’s the years after the Holocaust when that was socially unacceptable that were the anomaly. “Historically speaking, the decades in which my parents and I had grown up simply hadn’t been normal,” writes Horn. Now, she writes, normal is back. For Jews like myself with family photos featuring relatives murdered in the Holocaust, this point stopped me cold. There are signs of a new, more sober attitude toward antisemitism among younger Jewish artists. The 26-year-old Hannah Einbinder, who has integrated a long Hebrew prayer into her stand-up set, has said she stayed off Twitter in part because of antisemitism and always wears a Star of David necklace for political reasons. The comic Alex Edelman, 32, built his extremely funny Off Broadway show “Just for Us” around visiting a white nationalist meeting in Queens, having conversations with antisemites that eventually culminate in confrontation. His show is pointedly pessimistic about the ability of comedy to combat bigotry. AS I MULLED OVER THE TENSION between the twin Jewish traditions of being on guard against antisemitism and of finding humor in it, I thought back to my first adult job, as a copy editor at the Jewish newspaper The Forward in the late 1990s. One of my responsibilities was typing the hard-copy letters to the editor into the computer system, and in filing one from a woman offering feedback on a story about Hebrew schools, I made a typo. What she wrote in reference to her childhood peers was: “We knew exactly why Micah told us first to do justice, then to love mercy.” In a catastrophic mistake, I transcribed it as: “first to do justice, then to love money.” It didn’t take long before I was summoned to the editor’s office and fired. My first reaction was shock and panic. What will I do now? How will I pay the rent? But upon reflection, what stands out is how quickly my anxiety transformed into a kind of delight. I lost a job but gained a terrifically funny story that I would surely tell for years. And I did. It has gotten a ton of laughs. Long before social media, my story went viral offline, so much so that someone told it to me at a party not knowing it was about me. In my version, the woman who wrote the letter and the editor who fired me were guilty of a ridiculous overreaction to an honest mistake. Couldn’t they just laugh it off? In 2014, after a Pew study revealed that 42 percent of American Jews described having a good sense of humor as “essential” to being Jewish (more than twice as many as those who cited “Observing Jewish Law”), The Forward asked me to return to speak to its editorial board about comedy. In exchange, I asked if I could find the letter with my typo from the archives. I made a copy, framed it and put it above my desk. More recently, I took it down and put it in a file. Evidence I wish I could say that considering these issues has led to a dramatic epiphany, that it has radically changed me as a critic and a Jew. That would make for a better ending to this essay. But the truth is that I remain ambivalent, as uncomfortable with being defined by prejudice as with ignoring it, living up to the stereotype of the neurotic Jew. Concluding Statement Though I still find that story of being fired to be funny, now the outraged response doesn’t seem ridiculous. Joking about dark things is one of the great joys in life. But some laughs should stick in your throat. Evidence

nytimes\congress-russia-sanctions.txt

Using custom data configuration default-c69279b8df05313c

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-c69279b8df05313c\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-c69279b8df05313c\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

WASHINGTON — For weeks, as President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia signaled he was moving closer to invading Ukraine, members of Congress in both political parties vowed that the Senate would pass a “mother of all sanctions” bill targeting Moscow that would prove the overwhelming, bipartisan American resolve to stand with Kyiv against Russian aggression. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.959696352481842}
But on Thursday evening, with the threat of invasion looming ever more acutely, senators could muster only the legislative equivalent of a strongly worded letter scolding Mr. Putin for a “provocative and reckless” military buildup on Ukraine’s border, passing a nonbinding resolution quickly and without debate before leaving Washington for a weeklong break. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.7966356873512268}
Some senators praised the symbolic action, taken with a voice vote, as proof that the Senate could unite to deliver a strong message of support at a perilous moment. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.9012523293495178}
But it was a striking backtracking, born of deep disagreements between the two parties over when and how to impose sanctions on top Russian officials and banks, and resistance by the Biden administration to acting before Mr. Putin invaded. The result was legislative paralysis on a measure that — at least conceptually — seemed to have enjoyed overwhelming support. Few senators had even questioned whether approving additional sanctions on Moscow would act as a deterrent against further incursions by Russia into Ukraine. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8308201432228088}
“Both parties are saying the same thing about wanting the same result,” said Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, who had been negotiating the bill on behalf of his party. “It’s just, what action gets us that result?” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8806584477424622}
Republicans and Democrats squabbled about that question for weeks. In January, Democrats scuttled an effort by Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, to impose sanctions on Nord Stream 2, the Russian gas pipeline, arguing that imposing such measures before an invasion would give up key leverage that United States officials needed in diplomatic talks with Russia. Pressing a case made by the White House, they also said it would alienate Germany when demonstrating European unity against Moscow’s aggression was crucial. They all but promised they would coalesce around a new sanctions bill. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9809991121292114}
The measure under discussion in recent weeks by Mr. Risch and Senator Bob Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat who is the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, was supposed to be what they called the “mother of all sanctions” packages. It would have slapped immediate penalties on Russian officials and entities, and additional ones should Mr. Putin invade. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8423999547958374}
The bill also would have authorized President Biden to use the Lend-Lease Act of 1941 to lend military equipment to Ukraine, on top of the $2.7 billion in security assistance the United States has committed to Kyiv since 2014. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7643182277679443}
For weeks, senators used language such as “fine-tuning” and “one-yard line” to describe how close they were to reaching a deal. Mr. Menendez suggested that senators might even plow over objections from the White House to imposing sanctions before an invasion, a move that Republicans had pushed for but the Biden administration had lobbied hard to head off. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9889097809791565}
“They’re not enthralled with the idea,” Mr. Menendez told reporters about the White House. “But I have suggested to them that a strong bipartisan response strengthens their hand.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.34105992317199707}
But in the end, according to aides familiar with the negotiations, the intractable disagreements that doomed Mr. Cruz’s legislation also snarled the bipartisan negotiations. Democrats balked at imposing such broad sanctions before an invasion, amid fierce resistance from the Treasury Department, and Republicans insisted on doing so. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.900461733341217}
As the talks wore on with no resolution, prominent backers of a sanctions package — including Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader — began to argue that Mr. Biden could unilaterally impose sanctions without congressional action. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.47728344798088074}
By Tuesday, eyeing the coming recess and the decaying state of negotiations, Senate Republicans unveiled their own sanctions legislation that also would have provided the Ukrainian government with an additional $500 million in military financing. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8626869320869446}
Mr. Menendez denounced the move as “partisan posturing,” and said the proposal was “largely a reflection of what Democrats had already agreed to.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3164929747581482}
“A partisan victory is not worth a message of division from Washington, which only benefits Putin,” he said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.46514105796813965}
Despite the partisan bickering over how best to proceed, there has been little division in the Senate over whether additional sanctions could change Mr. Putin’s behavior. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3968569338321686}
Even Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, who has argued that allowing Ukraine to join NATO would strain the security posture of the United States at a time when it should be focused on China, endorsed imposing additional sanctions. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6193584203720093}
“If they get to a point where their financial system is seriously impaired, I think that that will absolutely send a message,” Mr. Hawley said in a brief interview. “In the new era we’re entering in Europe, we’re going to have to do more with less.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.870842695236206}
Only Senators Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, who has long opposed the use of sanctions, and Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, have publicly opposed the proposed bill. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.671538233757019}
“The sanctions against Russia that would be imposed as a consequence of its actions and Russia’s threatened response to those sanctions could result in massive economic upheaval — with impacts on energy, banking, food and the day-to-day needs of ordinary people throughout the entire world,” Mr. Sanders said in a speech from the Senate floor last week. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9593352675437927}
That argument has also been adopted by some progressives in the House. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.6042806506156921}
A Russian incursion, however, would most likely only rally more support to impose sanctions, though both the House and Senate are slated on be out on recess until the last week of February. It would also eliminate the dispute over timing of the sanctions that appears to have hamstrung Senate negotiators: whether to impose sanctions before an invasion. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6751064658164978}
“I can tell you this,” Mr. Risch said. “If there’s an invasion, there is going to be a lot of support for this bill.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.28794416785240173}

WASHINGTON — For weeks, as President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia signaled he was moving closer to invading Ukraine, members of Congress in both political parties vowed that the Senate would pass a “mother of all sanctions” bill targeting Moscow that would prove the overwhelming, bipartisan American resolve to stand with Kyiv against Russian aggression. Evidence But on Thursday evening, with the threat of invasion looming ever more acutely, senators could muster only the legislative equivalent of a strongly worded letter scolding Mr. Putin for a “provocative and reckless” military buildup on Ukraine’s border, passing a nonbinding resolution quickly and without debate before leaving Washington for a weeklong break. Rebuttal Some senators praised the symbolic action, taken with a voice vote, as proof that the Senate could unite to deliver a strong message of support at a perilous moment. Counterclaim But it was a striking backtracking, born of deep disagreements between the two parties over when and how to impose sanctions on top Russian officials and banks, and resistance by the Biden administration to acting before Mr. Putin invaded. The result was legislative paralysis on a measure that — at least conceptually — seemed to have enjoyed overwhelming support. Few senators had even questioned whether approving additional sanctions on Moscow would act as a deterrent against further incursions by Russia into Ukraine. Rebuttal “Both parties are saying the same thing about wanting the same result,” said Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, who had been negotiating the bill on behalf of his party. “It’s just, what action gets us that result?” Republicans and Democrats squabbled about that question for weeks. In January, Democrats scuttled an effort by Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, to impose sanctions on Nord Stream 2, the Russian gas pipeline, arguing that imposing such measures before an invasion would give up key leverage that United States officials needed in diplomatic talks with Russia. Pressing a case made by the White House, they also said it would alienate Germany when demonstrating European unity against Moscow’s aggression was crucial. They all but promised they would coalesce around a new sanctions bill. The measure under discussion in recent weeks by Mr. Risch and Senator Bob Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat who is the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, was supposed to be what they called the “mother of all sanctions” packages. It would have slapped immediate penalties on Russian officials and entities, and additional ones should Mr. Putin invade. The bill also would have authorized President Biden to use the Lend-Lease Act of 1941 to lend military equipment to Ukraine, on top of the $2.7 billion in security assistance the United States has committed to Kyiv since 2014. For weeks, senators used language such as “fine-tuning” and “one-yard line” to describe how close they were to reaching a deal. Mr. Menendez suggested that senators might even plow over objections from the White House to imposing sanctions before an invasion, a move that Republicans had pushed for but the Biden administration had lobbied hard to head off. “They’re not enthralled with the idea,” Mr. Menendez told reporters about the White House. “But I have suggested to them that a strong bipartisan response strengthens their hand.” Evidence But in the end, according to aides familiar with the negotiations, the intractable disagreements that doomed Mr. Cruz’s legislation also snarled the bipartisan negotiations. Democrats balked at imposing such broad sanctions before an invasion, amid fierce resistance from the Treasury Department, and Republicans insisted on doing so. Rebuttal As the talks wore on with no resolution, prominent backers of a sanctions package — including Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader — began to argue that Mr. Biden could unilaterally impose sanctions without congressional action. By Tuesday, eyeing the coming recess and the decaying state of negotiations, Senate Republicans unveiled their own sanctions legislation that also would have provided the Ukrainian government with an additional $500 million in military financing. Evidence Mr. Menendez denounced the move as “partisan posturing,” and said the proposal was “largely a reflection of what Democrats had already agreed to.” “A partisan victory is not worth a message of division from Washington, which only benefits Putin,” he said. Despite the partisan bickering over how best to proceed, there has been little division in the Senate over whether additional sanctions could change Mr. Putin’s behavior. Claim Even Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, who has argued that allowing Ukraine to join NATO would strain the security posture of the United States at a time when it should be focused on China, endorsed imposing additional sanctions. “If they get to a point where their financial system is seriously impaired, I think that that will absolutely send a message,” Mr. Hawley said in a brief interview. “In the new era we’re entering in Europe, we’re going to have to do more with less.” Only Senators Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, who has long opposed the use of sanctions, and Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, have publicly opposed the proposed bill. “The sanctions against Russia that would be imposed as a consequence of its actions and Russia’s threatened response to those sanctions could result in massive economic upheaval — with impacts on energy, banking, food and the day-to-day needs of ordinary people throughout the entire world,” Mr. Sanders said in a speech from the Senate floor last week. Evidence That argument has also been adopted by some progressives in the House. Counterclaim A Russian incursion, however, would most likely only rally more support to impose sanctions, though both the House and Senate are slated on be out on recess until the last week of February. It would also eliminate the dispute over timing of the sanctions that appears to have hamstrung Senate negotiators: whether to impose sanctions before an invasion. Evidence “I can tell you this,” Mr. Risch said. “If there’s an invasion, there is going to be a lot of support for this bill.” Claim

nytimes\congress-stock-trading-ban.txt

Using custom data configuration default-185e8bd71d8b8e99

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-185e8bd71d8b8e99\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-185e8bd71d8b8e99\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Americans are in a sour mood with their elected officials. Blame the pandemic or inflation or Trumpism or stress or structural problems like inequality, but people do not feel that the system, much less its leaders, are working for them. The nation is experiencing a crisis of confidence that is eating away at its strength and unity. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7512912750244141}
Addressing this problem calls for long-term vision and commitment — things politicians aren’t always known for. But a straightforward idea gaining traction on Capitol Hill could reassure a frustrated and exhausted public that lawmakers at least recognize this trust deficit: a ban on stock trading by members of Congress and their spouses. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.5638980865478516}
This idea got a fresh jolt in the early days of the pandemic after some lawmakers faced awkward questions about whether they used nonpublic information to make lucrative stock trades just as the severity of the threat posed by the coronavirus was becoming clear. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4299871027469635}
A report in December by Insider was more definitive. It revealed that in 2020 and 2021, dozens of lawmakers failed to abide by rules requiring them to promptly disclose stock trades above a certain threshold. The investigation also found that Congress does a poor job of enforcing accountability and transparency measures. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9643803238868713}
In response to the uproar, there has been a push by both parties, in both houses of Congress, to establish stronger guardrails on congressional stock ownership. Multiple lawmakers have introduced bills pushing variations of a ban on trading individual stocks, some tougher and more expansive than others. The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, reportedly told donors in January that if, as expected, Republicans win back the House in the midterm elections this fall, they would work to pass legislation that would limit lawmakers’ ability to trade stocks. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9624192714691162}
In a high-stakes election year, with lawmakers eager to show voters that they feel their rage, now is the moment to drive home this popular, common-sense reform. Americans have lost faith in Congress. Restoring trust in this institution requires concrete, bipartisan change. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5071184039115906}
It has been a decade since Congress last made a significant effort at policing itself in this area. The Stock Act of 2012, among other measures, made it illegal for lawmakers to trade based on access to nonpublic information. The reforms were well intentioned but inadequate. In practice, there are too many legal shades of gray. A clearer, brighter line needs to be drawn. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7956706881523132}
For all of the Democratic Party’s talk about restoring public faith in government, its leaders in the House have been, until recently, resistant to talk of a trading ban for members. “We are a free-market economy,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in December. “They should be able to participate in that.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7686976790428162}
The majority leader, Steny Hoyer, has been similarly weak, suggesting that a ban is unnecessary. While Mr. Hoyer owns no stock, he has said that “members ought not to be in a different situation that they would otherwise be if they weren’t members of Congress.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7227028608322144}
This rationale does not pass the sniff test. Members of Congress have access to a steady stream of information that regular Americans do not. They already exist in a different, more privileged situation. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8348825573921204}
The common argument that a trading ban would pose a hardship for lawmakers is no more compelling. Most of the proposals under consideration do not call for members of Congress to sell all their stock holdings. They would merely prohibit lawmakers from trading stocks in individual companies. Assets could still be held in vehicles such as index funds or blind trusts. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7639166116714478}
It also bears noting that only a sliver of American families, about 15 percent, directly hold stock in individual companies, as opposed to indirectly through mutual funds and the like. A stock trading ban would put lawmakers more in sync with the 85 percent of Americans who own no individual stock, rather than align their interests with the 15 percent who do. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.948397696018219}
A ban on congressional trading enjoys a bipartisan appeal that is rare in this polarized age. A January poll found that 63 percent of American voters are at least somewhat in favor of such a move — with strong backing among Democrats, Republicans and independents alike. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8456050157546997}
With the support for reform growing, Ms. Pelosi adjusted course this month, saying she was open to a ban and announcing that the House Administration Committee would look into the situation. The committee chairwoman, Zoe Lofgren of California, has said her team is analyzing the existing bills and would put together a broad-based consensus proposal. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9629036784172058}
The speaker’s public shift was vital to keeping the push alive, but there is a difference between grudging acceptance and vigorous support. Proponents of reform need to keep the pressure on to ensure that this effort does not get slow-walked or bogged down in the devilish details. Ms. Pelosi, for instance, insisted that reform legislation should apply not only to Congress but also to the judiciary, including the Supreme Court. “It has to be governmentwide,” she asserted. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9079902768135071}
The judicial branch certainly could use some ethical shoring up. An investigation last year by The Wall Street Journal found that from 2010 to 2018, 131 federal judges “unlawfully ruled in cases involving companies in which they or their families held shares.” People involved in close to 800 lawsuits have since been notified that their cases are eligible to be reopened because of these conflicts. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9099015593528748}
There are proposals floating around that would address all three branches. Two Democrats, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Representative Katie Porter of California, recently reintroduced a bill that would tighten reporting requirements across the board, as well as bar trading of individual stocks by members of Congress, the president and vice president, Supreme Court justices and top officials with the Federal Reserve — which suffered its own trading scandals last year. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9592404961585999}
But trying to extend a governmentwide ban, while worthy on the merits, would introduce needless and potentially counterproductive complexity right now. There are, most specifically, concerns that an attempt by Congress to impose its will on the judiciary would set off a debilitating debate over the separation of powers. “That is literally a different conversation and one that is so hard to wrap your arms around that you’ve tanked the movement,” as Representative Abigail Spanberger, a Virginia Democrat who co-wrote one of the leading reform bills, lamented to The Times. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.6027979850769043}
Lawmakers’ top priority — arguably, their first duty — should be to clean up their own branch of government. They are, as elected officials, directly accountable to their voters, and many of the people to whom they owe their jobs and salaries have grave doubts about their ethical guidelines and rules of fair play. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5254449248313904}
In a series of recent Times Opinion focus groups, voters across the political spectrum described their frustrations and even anger at the political class and the system, seeing elected officials in both parties as acting in self-interest without rules or consequences. “They all just go to their barbecues and cocktail parties and laugh,” said one independent voter. “They just want the power. They couldn’t care less about us.” Some Democratic voters expressed interest in term limits, curbs on lobbyist influence on lawmakers and new rules on money in politics. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9864838719367981}
The push for a trading ban is about more than imposing rules to keep lawmakers on the straight and narrow. It is about changing the widespread perception of public service as a playground for corruption and self-dealing. It is about restoring Americans’ faith in their government. For Congress, there may be no worthier cause. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8422127962112427}

Americans are in a sour mood with their elected officials. Blame the pandemic or inflation or Trumpism or stress or structural problems like inequality, but people do not feel that the system, much less its leaders, are working for them. The nation is experiencing a crisis of confidence that is eating away at its strength and unity. Evidence Addressing this problem calls for long-term vision and commitment — things politicians aren’t always known for. But a straightforward idea gaining traction on Capitol Hill could reassure a frustrated and exhausted public that lawmakers at least recognize this trust deficit: a ban on stock trading by members of Congress and their spouses. Rebuttal This idea got a fresh jolt in the early days of the pandemic after some lawmakers faced awkward questions about whether they used nonpublic information to make lucrative stock trades just as the severity of the threat posed by the coronavirus was becoming clear. A report in December by Insider was more definitive. It revealed that in 2020 and 2021, dozens of lawmakers failed to abide by rules requiring them to promptly disclose stock trades above a certain threshold. The investigation also found that Congress does a poor job of enforcing accountability and transparency measures. In response to the uproar, there has been a push by both parties, in both houses of Congress, to establish stronger guardrails on congressional stock ownership. Multiple lawmakers have introduced bills pushing variations of a ban on trading individual stocks, some tougher and more expansive than others. The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, reportedly told donors in January that if, as expected, Republicans win back the House in the midterm elections this fall, they would work to pass legislation that would limit lawmakers’ ability to trade stocks. In a high-stakes election year, with lawmakers eager to show voters that they feel their rage, now is the moment to drive home this popular, common-sense reform. Americans have lost faith in Congress. Restoring trust in this institution requires concrete, bipartisan change. It has been a decade since Congress last made a significant effort at policing itself in this area. The Stock Act of 2012, among other measures, made it illegal for lawmakers to trade based on access to nonpublic information. The reforms were well intentioned but inadequate. In practice, there are too many legal shades of gray. A clearer, brighter line needs to be drawn. For all of the Democratic Party’s talk about restoring public faith in government, its leaders in the House have been, until recently, resistant to talk of a trading ban for members. “We are a free-market economy,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in December. “They should be able to participate in that.” The majority leader, Steny Hoyer, has been similarly weak, suggesting that a ban is unnecessary. While Mr. Hoyer owns no stock, he has said that “members ought not to be in a different situation that they would otherwise be if they weren’t members of Congress.” Evidence This rationale does not pass the sniff test. Members of Congress have access to a steady stream of information that regular Americans do not. They already exist in a different, more privileged situation. Rebuttal The common argument that a trading ban would pose a hardship for lawmakers is no more compelling. Most of the proposals under consideration do not call for members of Congress to sell all their stock holdings. They would merely prohibit lawmakers from trading stocks in individual companies. Assets could still be held in vehicles such as index funds or blind trusts. It also bears noting that only a sliver of American families, about 15 percent, directly hold stock in individual companies, as opposed to indirectly through mutual funds and the like. A stock trading ban would put lawmakers more in sync with the 85 percent of Americans who own no individual stock, rather than align their interests with the 15 percent who do. A ban on congressional trading enjoys a bipartisan appeal that is rare in this polarized age. A January poll found that 63 percent of American voters are at least somewhat in favor of such a move — with strong backing among Democrats, Republicans and independents alike. With the support for reform growing, Ms. Pelosi adjusted course this month, saying she was open to a ban and announcing that the House Administration Committee would look into the situation. The committee chairwoman, Zoe Lofgren of California, has said her team is analyzing the existing bills and would put together a broad-based consensus proposal. The speaker’s public shift was vital to keeping the push alive, but there is a difference between grudging acceptance and vigorous support. Proponents of reform need to keep the pressure on to ensure that this effort does not get slow-walked or bogged down in the devilish details. Ms. Pelosi, for instance, insisted that reform legislation should apply not only to Congress but also to the judiciary, including the Supreme Court. “It has to be governmentwide,” she asserted. The judicial branch certainly could use some ethical shoring up. An investigation last year by The Wall Street Journal found that from 2010 to 2018, 131 federal judges “unlawfully ruled in cases involving companies in which they or their families held shares.” People involved in close to 800 lawsuits have since been notified that their cases are eligible to be reopened because of these conflicts. There are proposals floating around that would address all three branches. Two Democrats, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Representative Katie Porter of California, recently reintroduced a bill that would tighten reporting requirements across the board, as well as bar trading of individual stocks by members of Congress, the president and vice president, Supreme Court justices and top officials with the Federal Reserve — which suffered its own trading scandals last year. Evidence But trying to extend a governmentwide ban, while worthy on the merits, would introduce needless and potentially counterproductive complexity right now. There are, most specifically, concerns that an attempt by Congress to impose its will on the judiciary would set off a debilitating debate over the separation of powers. “That is literally a different conversation and one that is so hard to wrap your arms around that you’ve tanked the movement,” as Representative Abigail Spanberger, a Virginia Democrat who co-wrote one of the leading reform bills, lamented to The Times. Rebuttal Lawmakers’ top priority — arguably, their first duty — should be to clean up their own branch of government. They are, as elected officials, directly accountable to their voters, and many of the people to whom they owe their jobs and salaries have grave doubts about their ethical guidelines and rules of fair play. In a series of recent Times Opinion focus groups, voters across the political spectrum described their frustrations and even anger at the political class and the system, seeing elected officials in both parties as acting in self-interest without rules or consequences. “They all just go to their barbecues and cocktail parties and laugh,” said one independent voter. “They just want the power. They couldn’t care less about us.” Some Democratic voters expressed interest in term limits, curbs on lobbyist influence on lawmakers and new rules on money in politics. The push for a trading ban is about more than imposing rules to keep lawmakers on the straight and narrow. It is about changing the widespread perception of public service as a playground for corruption and self-dealing. It is about restoring Americans’ faith in their government. For Congress, there may be no worthier cause. Evidence

nytimes\covid-depression-anxiety.txt

Using custom data configuration default-61685495b7258437

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-61685495b7258437\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-61685495b7258437\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Social isolation, economic stress, loss of loved ones and other struggles during the pandemic have contributed to rising mental health issues like anxiety and depression. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5566884279251099}
But can having Covid itself increase the risk of developing mental health problems? A large new study suggests it can. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8751872181892395}
The study, published Wednesday in the journal The BMJ, analyzed records of nearly 154,000 Covid patients in the Veterans Health Administration system and compared their experience in the year after they recovered from their initial infection with that of a similar group of people who did not contract the virus. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7757354974746704}
The study included only patients who had no mental health diagnoses or treatment for at least two years before becoming infected with the coronavirus, allowing researchers to focus on psychiatric diagnoses and treatment that occurred after coronavirus infection. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.46088334918022156}
People who had Covid were 39 percent more likely to be diagnosed with depression and 35 percent more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety over the months following infection than people without Covid during the same period, the study found. Covid patients were 38 percent more likely to be diagnosed with stress and adjustment disorders and 41 percent more likely to be diagnosed with sleep disorders than uninfected people. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9850339293479919}
“There appears to be a clear excess of mental health diagnoses in the months after Covid,” said Dr. Paul Harrison, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Oxford, who was not involved in the study. He said the results echoed the emerging picture from other research, including a 2021 study on which he was an author, and “it strengthens the case that there is something about Covid that is leaving people at greater risk of common mental health conditions.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9399288892745972}
The data does not suggest that most Covid patients will develop mental health symptoms. Only between 4.4 percent and 5.6 percent of those in the study received diagnoses of depression, anxiety or stress and adjustment disorders. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6379218101501465}
“It’s not an epidemic of anxiety and depression, fortunately,” Dr. Harrison said. “But it’s not trivial.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.31222933530807495}
Researchers also found that Covid patients were 80 percent more likely to develop cognitive problems like brain fog, confusion and forgetfulness than those who didn’t have Covid. They were 34 percent more likely to develop opioid use disorders, possibly from drugs prescribed for pain, and 20 percent more likely to develop non-opioid substance use disorders including alcoholism, the study reported. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9768944382667542}
After having Covid, people were 55 percent more likely to be taking prescribed antidepressants and 65 percent more likely to be taking prescribed anti-anxiety medications than contemporaries without Covid, the study found. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6104845404624939}
Overall, more than 18 percent of the Covid patients received a diagnosis of or prescription for a neuropsychiatric issue in the following year, compared with less than 12 percent of the non-Covid group. Covid patients were 60 percent more likely to fall into those categories than people who didn’t have Covid, the study found. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9274622201919556}
The study found that patients hospitalized for Covid were more likely to be diagnosed with mental health issues than those with less serious coronavirus infections. But people with mild initial infections were still at greater risk than people without Covid. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7578178644180298}
“Some people always argue that ‘Oh, well, maybe people are depressed because they needed to go to the hospital and they spent like a week in the I.C.U.,’” said the senior author of the study, Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, chief of research and development at the V.A. St. Louis Health Care System and a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “In people who weren’t hospitalized for Covid-19, the risk was lower but certainly significant. And most people don’t need to be hospitalized, so that is really the group that’s representative of most people with Covid-19.” {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.5442944765090942}
The team also compared mental health diagnoses for people hospitalized for Covid with those hospitalized for any other reason. “Whether people were hospitalized for heart attacks or chemotherapy or whatever other conditions, the Covid-19 group exhibited a higher risk,” Dr. Al-Aly said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9376354217529297}
The study involved electronic medical records of 153,848 adults who tested positive for the coronavirus between March 1, 2020, and Jan. 15, 2021, and survived for at least 30 days. Because it was early in the pandemic, very few were vaccinated before infection. The patients were followed until Nov. 30, 2021. Dr. Al-Aly said his team was planning to analyze whether subsequent vaccination modified people’s mental health symptoms, as well as other post-Covid medical issues the group has studied. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9923413991928101}
The Covid patients were compared with more than 5.6 million patients in the Veterans system who did not test positive for the coronavirus and more than 5.8 million patients from before the pandemic, in the period spanning March 2018 through January 2019. To try to gauge the mental health impact of Covid-19 against that of another virus, the patients were also compared with about 72,000 patients who had the flu during the two and a half years before the pandemic. (Dr. Al-Aly said there were too few flu cases during the pandemic to provide a contemporaneous comparison.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9939991235733032}
The researchers tried to minimize differences between groups by adjusting for many demographic characteristics, pre-Covid health conditions, residence in nursing homes and other variables. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6047168374061584}
In the year after their infection, the Covid patients had higher rates of mental health diagnoses than the other groups. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.789717972278595}
“It’s not really surprising to me because we’ve been seeing this,” said Dr. Maura Boldrini, an associate professor of psychiatry at NewYork-Presbyterian Columbia University Medical Center. “It’s striking to me how many times we’ve seen people with these new symptoms with no previous psychiatric history.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7930557727813721}
Most veterans in the study were men, three-quarters were white and their average age was 63, so the findings may not apply to all Americans. Still, the study included over 1.3 million women and 2.1 million Black patients, and Dr. Al-Aly said “we found evidence of increased risk regardless of age, race or gender.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9583377242088318}
There are several possible reasons for the increase in mental health diagnoses, Dr. Al-Aly and outside experts said. Dr. Boldrini said she believed the symptoms were most likely influenced by both biological factors and the psychological stresses associated with having an illness. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6691733002662659}
“In psychiatry, it almost always is an interplay,” she said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7392911314964294}
Research, including brain autopsies of patients who died of Covid-19, has found evidence that Covid infection can generate inflammation or tiny blood clots in the brain, and can cause small and large strokes, said Dr. Boldrini, who has conducted some of these studies. In some people, the immune response that is activated to fight against a coronavirus infection may not shut down effectively once the infection is gone, which can fuel inflammation, she said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.987250030040741}
“Inflammatory markers can disrupt the ability of the brain to function in many ways, including the ability of the brain to make serotonin, which is fundamental for mood and sleep,” Dr. Boldrini said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6677616238594055}
By themselves, such brain changes may or may not cause psychological problems. But, if someone is experiencing stress from having felt physically ill or because having Covid disrupted their lives and routines, she said, “you may be more prone to not being able to cope because your brain is not functioning 100 percent.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8959760665893555}
Dr. Harrison, who has conducted other studies with large electronic medical databases, noted that such analyses can miss more granular information about patients. He also said that some people in the comparison groups might have had Covid and not been tested to confirm it, and that some Covid patients might have been more likely to receive diagnoses because they were more worried about their health after Covid or because doctors were quicker to identify psychological symptoms. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9693528413772583}
“There’s no one analysis that tells you the whole story,” Dr. Al-Aly said. “Maybe all of us or most of us experienced some sort of an emotional distress or mental health stress or some sleep problem,” he added. “But people with Covid did worse.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.806209921836853}

Social isolation, economic stress, loss of loved ones and other struggles during the pandemic have contributed to rising mental health issues like anxiety and depression. Claim But can having Covid itself increase the risk of developing mental health problems? A large new study suggests it can. Rebuttal The study, published Wednesday in the journal The BMJ, analyzed records of nearly 154,000 Covid patients in the Veterans Health Administration system and compared their experience in the year after they recovered from their initial infection with that of a similar group of people who did not contract the virus. The study included only patients who had no mental health diagnoses or treatment for at least two years before becoming infected with the coronavirus, allowing researchers to focus on psychiatric diagnoses and treatment that occurred after coronavirus infection. People who had Covid were 39 percent more likely to be diagnosed with depression and 35 percent more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety over the months following infection than people without Covid during the same period, the study found. Covid patients were 38 percent more likely to be diagnosed with stress and adjustment disorders and 41 percent more likely to be diagnosed with sleep disorders than uninfected people. “There appears to be a clear excess of mental health diagnoses in the months after Covid,” said Dr. Paul Harrison, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Oxford, who was not involved in the study. He said the results echoed the emerging picture from other research, including a 2021 study on which he was an author, and “it strengthens the case that there is something about Covid that is leaving people at greater risk of common mental health conditions.” The data does not suggest that most Covid patients will develop mental health symptoms. Only between 4.4 percent and 5.6 percent of those in the study received diagnoses of depression, anxiety or stress and adjustment disorders. “It’s not an epidemic of anxiety and depression, fortunately,” Dr. Harrison said. “But it’s not trivial.” Researchers also found that Covid patients were 80 percent more likely to develop cognitive problems like brain fog, confusion and forgetfulness than those who didn’t have Covid. They were 34 percent more likely to develop opioid use disorders, possibly from drugs prescribed for pain, and 20 percent more likely to develop non-opioid substance use disorders including alcoholism, the study reported. After having Covid, people were 55 percent more likely to be taking prescribed antidepressants and 65 percent more likely to be taking prescribed anti-anxiety medications than contemporaries without Covid, the study found. Overall, more than 18 percent of the Covid patients received a diagnosis of or prescription for a neuropsychiatric issue in the following year, compared with less than 12 percent of the non-Covid group. Covid patients were 60 percent more likely to fall into those categories than people who didn’t have Covid, the study found. The study found that patients hospitalized for Covid were more likely to be diagnosed with mental health issues than those with less serious coronavirus infections. But people with mild initial infections were still at greater risk than people without Covid. Evidence “Some people always argue that ‘Oh, well, maybe people are depressed because they needed to go to the hospital and they spent like a week in the I.C.U.,’” said the senior author of the study, Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, chief of research and development at the V.A. St. Louis Health Care System and a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “In people who weren’t hospitalized for Covid-19, the risk was lower but certainly significant. And most people don’t need to be hospitalized, so that is really the group that’s representative of most people with Covid-19.” Counterclaim The team also compared mental health diagnoses for people hospitalized for Covid with those hospitalized for any other reason. “Whether people were hospitalized for heart attacks or chemotherapy or whatever other conditions, the Covid-19 group exhibited a higher risk,” Dr. Al-Aly said. The study involved electronic medical records of 153,848 adults who tested positive for the coronavirus between March 1, 2020, and Jan. 15, 2021, and survived for at least 30 days. Because it was early in the pandemic, very few were vaccinated before infection. The patients were followed until Nov. 30, 2021. Dr. Al-Aly said his team was planning to analyze whether subsequent vaccination modified people’s mental health symptoms, as well as other post-Covid medical issues the group has studied. The Covid patients were compared with more than 5.6 million patients in the Veterans system who did not test positive for the coronavirus and more than 5.8 million patients from before the pandemic, in the period spanning March 2018 through January 2019. To try to gauge the mental health impact of Covid-19 against that of another virus, the patients were also compared with about 72,000 patients who had the flu during the two and a half years before the pandemic. (Dr. Al-Aly said there were too few flu cases during the pandemic to provide a contemporaneous comparison.) Evidence The researchers tried to minimize differences between groups by adjusting for many demographic characteristics, pre-Covid health conditions, residence in nursing homes and other variables. In the year after their infection, the Covid patients had higher rates of mental health diagnoses than the other groups. Claim “It’s not really surprising to me because we’ve been seeing this,” said Dr. Maura Boldrini, an associate professor of psychiatry at NewYork-Presbyterian Columbia University Medical Center. “It’s striking to me how many times we’ve seen people with these new symptoms with no previous psychiatric history.” Most veterans in the study were men, three-quarters were white and their average age was 63, so the findings may not apply to all Americans. Still, the study included over 1.3 million women and 2.1 million Black patients, and Dr. Al-Aly said “we found evidence of increased risk regardless of age, race or gender.” There are several possible reasons for the increase in mental health diagnoses, Dr. Al-Aly and outside experts said. Dr. Boldrini said she believed the symptoms were most likely influenced by both biological factors and the psychological stresses associated with having an illness. Evidence “In psychiatry, it almost always is an interplay,” she said. Claim Research, including brain autopsies of patients who died of Covid-19, has found evidence that Covid infection can generate inflammation or tiny blood clots in the brain, and can cause small and large strokes, said Dr. Boldrini, who has conducted some of these studies. In some people, the immune response that is activated to fight against a coronavirus infection may not shut down effectively once the infection is gone, which can fuel inflammation, she said. “Inflammatory markers can disrupt the ability of the brain to function in many ways, including the ability of the brain to make serotonin, which is fundamental for mood and sleep,” Dr. Boldrini said. By themselves, such brain changes may or may not cause psychological problems. But, if someone is experiencing stress from having felt physically ill or because having Covid disrupted their lives and routines, she said, “you may be more prone to not being able to cope because your brain is not functioning 100 percent.” Dr. Harrison, who has conducted other studies with large electronic medical databases, noted that such analyses can miss more granular information about patients. He also said that some people in the comparison groups might have had Covid and not been tested to confirm it, and that some Covid patients might have been more likely to receive diagnoses because they were more worried about their health after Covid or because doctors were quicker to identify psychological symptoms. “There’s no one analysis that tells you the whole story,” Dr. Al-Aly said. “Maybe all of us or most of us experienced some sort of an emotional distress or mental health stress or some sleep problem,” he added. “But people with Covid did worse.” Evidence

nytimes\covid-nursing-shortages.txt

Using custom data configuration default-792f600720f967e5

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-792f600720f967e5\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-792f600720f967e5\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

As hospitals in the United States battled another coronavirus wave in the past few months, another crisis was steadily growing more acute: a shortage of nurses. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6557773351669312}
At Pascagoula Hospital in Mississippi, one nurse acknowledged the inevitable: Under such relentless pressure, patient care is deteriorating. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6018339395523071}
We speak to some of the “forgotten warriors” of the nursing profession to find out what life is like on the front line of the pandemic. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5121787190437317}
Andrew Jacobs, a global health reporter for The New York Times. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7284315228462219}
The exodus of medical workers during the pandemic has been especially brutal for the small, nonprofit safety-net hospitals where millions of Americans seek care. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6175181865692139}

As hospitals in the United States battled another coronavirus wave in the past few months, another crisis was steadily growing more acute: a shortage of nurses. At Pascagoula Hospital in Mississippi, one nurse acknowledged the inevitable: Under such relentless pressure, patient care is deteriorating. We speak to some of the “forgotten warriors” of the nursing profession to find out what life is like on the front line of the pandemic. Andrew Jacobs, a global health reporter for The New York Times. The exodus of medical workers during the pandemic has been especially brutal for the small, nonprofit safety-net hospitals where millions of Americans seek care. Claim

nytimes\covid-plague-work-labor.txt

Using custom data configuration default-f71b96cec2acb335

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-f71b96cec2acb335\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-f71b96cec2acb335\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

In the wake of a devastating pandemic, millions of people are dead and many more have had their lives upended. Many of those who survive, worn down by a sense of futility in their work and by the impassable gap between the wealthy and everyone else, refuse to return to their old jobs or quit en masse. Tired of being overworked and underpaid, they feel they deserve a better life. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6132829189300537}
This could be a story about today, but it is also the pattern that emerged across Europe in the aftermath of one of the deadliest pandemics in recorded history, the Black Death. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.35075509548187256}
The struggles over wages and the value of labor that defined the postplague years were in some ways as dramatic as the pandemic itself. Eventually, Europe erupted into violence. Given where we are right now, it’s worth paying attention to the chain of events that led, link by link, from pandemic to panic to bloody uprising. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8090362548828125}
The Black Death, as we now call it, burned its way across the Eurasian continent from 1347 to 1351. Arab historian Ibn Khaldun recalled with horror, “Civilization both in the East and the West was visited by a destructive plague which devastated nations and caused populations to vanish. It swallowed up many of the good things of civilization and wiped them out.’’ {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.977314829826355}
Europe, particularly hard-hit, lost somewhere between a third and a half of its population (though historians still dispute the figure). “Many lands and cities were made desolate,” the Italian historian Giovanni Villani wrote in 1348. “And this plague lasted till _____.” He never filled in the end date. He had died of the plague before he could. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9775137901306152}
When we think of the Black Death, we tend to think of the gruesome scenes reported in the cities: the heaped corpses, the trenches where bodies were hurled, unmourned. What contemporaries also found eerie, however, was what they saw in the countryside — not scenes of destruction, but visions of bounty and overgrowth. Fields of ripe grain sitting under the sun. Vines heavy with grapes. These sights were unsettling because they suggested there was no one left alive to bring in the harvests. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9811782240867615}
“Many a fine, noble estate / Lay idle without those to work it,” wrote the poet and composer Guillaume de Machaut, who weathered the plague by hiding locked up in his tower. His poem goes on: {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8228248357772827}
The cattle lay aboutThe fields completely abandonedGrazing in the corn and among the grapesAnywhere at all they likedAnd they had no master, no cowherdNo man at all to round them up {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9176966547966003}
Following the demographic collapse, there was a severe shortage of labor. And so, after the initial shock, as modern economists would predict, the price of labor skyrocketed. Machaut wrote: {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7501497864723206}
No man had his fields plowedHis grain sowed, or his vines tendedThough he’d have paid out triple wagesNo, surely, not even for 20 times the rateBecause so many had died {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8809373378753662}
Workers of all kinds — farm laborers, artisans in the cities, even poor parish priests who’d had to minister to the dying — looked at their lives once the pandemic had eased and reassessed what they were worth. They saw a system that was tilted impossibly against them. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9074721336364746}
In England, for example, around half the population was legally tied to the land in serfdom, forced to labor for their local landlord. But suddenly, these workers seemed to have some bargaining power. No longer were they obligated to put up with unreasonable demands. No longer were their employers able to take them for granted. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9886603355407715}
They needed higher wages, for one thing, to deal with the runaway inflation that followed the plague: In England, despite the drop in the cost of some basic commodities like grain, overall prices for consumer goods rose about 27 percent from 1348 to 1350. Laborers complained they couldn’t afford the bare necessities — and if they weren’t paid what they demanded, they walked away from the plow, fled their landlords’ villages, and went off in search of a better deal. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9914889335632324}
We have not suffered as brutal a demographic blow during Covid, but still American workers have reassessed what it means to work and what their labor is worth — and record numbers have left their jobs in the Great Resignation of the past several months. About 3 percent of the total U.S. work force quit in November alone, the Labor Department reported. According to a September poll, 46 percent of full-time employees were either considering or actively looking for a new job. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9849261045455933}
Low-paying entry-level jobs have become particularly hard to fill, while social media is full of angry discussions about how two or even three jobs are necessary to pay the average rent in the average city. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5006293654441833}
The past few months have seen several high-profile strikes as workers demand fair compensation, with notable union successes at Kellogg and Deere. In this sense, we are seeing echoes of the situation following the Black Death, as workers refuse to return to prepandemic conditions and as they re-evaluate their needs and their value. Too much has changed in the last two years. The world is different. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9657613635063171}
As we move toward a new, postpandemic era, the tensions in the labor market of the 14th century may have something to teach us about turmoil to come. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7075629830360413}
In the years after the plague, all across Europe, landowners and noblemen watched, first in outrage, then in fury, as people walked away from their jobs and went in search of a better life. What followed was a hysterical wave of legislation that tried to return the economy to where it had been before the plague. Statutes and ordinances froze wages at pre-plague levels; they made it illegal to leave a master’s land, illegal to flee; they, in effect, made unemployment itself illegal. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9495525360107422}
The English Statute of Laborers condemned peasants who fled their manorial contracts to have an ‘F’ branded on their foreheads, for ‘Falsity.’ In Italy, Florence’s new labor laws, openly called “Against Rural Laborers,” declared that those who neglected their master’s farm could be tried as rebels — liable to be dragged through the streets in red-hot chains and buried alive. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9902244210243225}
Pressure continued to build: On one side, a newly emboldened work force demanded a living wage, a chance to flourish; on the other, kings and councils, lords and wealthy commons, were determined that nothing change. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6041584014892578}
Eventually, the pressure became too great. In the second half of the century, violence erupted across Europe. Workers swarmed through the streets of the great towns. They burned manorial records and labor contracts. They destroyed any evidence of their service and their ties to the land. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9257968068122864}
One shocked chronicler in France in 1358 wrote that outraged peasants “killed, slaughtered and massacred without mercy all the nobles whom they could find, even their own lords. Not only this: They leveled the houses and fortresses of the nobles to the ground.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9643763303756714}
Nobles, in turn, began burning villages and slaughtering laborers. The same French chronicler describes them attacking “not merely those they believed to have done them harm, but all they found, whether in their houses or digging in the vineyards or in the fields.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9766740202903748}
In England, popular resentment about taxation and outrageous inequities burst into vandalism and violence in the Great Rising of 1381. Mobs executed the chancellor and mounted his messily severed head up on London Bridge. They demanded the end of lordship and recognized no authority but the king’s. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9861024618148804}
Of course, there are many important differences between our financial and political situation and those in the decades after the plague. But the growing sense of frustration among the vast working population of our country connects us to those medieval peasants and artisans who bucked elite expectations to seek a better life for themselves. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7847090363502502}
Over the past four decades, most Americans have seen wages stagnate against the cost of living. The Trump-era tax laws of 2017 legislated breaks that disproportionately benefited the rich. And we, like the medieval peasantry, are surrounded by the spectacle of high net worth individuals and their expensive adventurism. The fortunes of American billionaires grew by 70 percent in the pandemic — and as we learned this summer, some regularly pay nothing or next to nothing in taxes. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9842507839202881}
The wealthy are taking the rest of us for a ride in a system that is slanted against us. Left and right formulate it differently — but we’re all aware of that gap. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5307193398475647}
The mood of the country is dark and fundamentally splintered. If we do see spasms of violence, I predict they are less likely to resemble the revolutionary politics of the medieval uprisings than the feckless, irrational atrocities that often went on in the shadows of those uprisings, when mobs targeted out-groups: Jews, accused of poisoning wells; the Flemish, accused of stealing English jobs, some of whom were hunted down in the streets and killed on sight. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9458557963371277}
How, then, do we address the cavernous inequities and avoid the violence of resentment? {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7294846177101135}
The American electorate needs a shared story that fits the facts without scapegoating or conspiratorial paranoia. This is a moment ripe for action precisely because we do share some fragments of a story: a weariness and wariness; a sense that we can’t get ahead; an outrage that the powerful are never held accountable. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6529118418693542}
The major medieval uprisings brought together people from many different walks of life, rural and urban: not just peasants but artisans, builders, small-time merchants and even the clergy. A collective labor movement could do something similar for us today. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.966899573802948}
The union victories of the past couple of months are a great example of how workers can come together and take advantage of this moment of dissent — and an example of how C-suite elites can strengthen employee loyalty in a time of high turnover. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.49199503660202026}
We also need to more proactively discuss the broadening gap of income inequality that has marked this new century. At this point, the top 1 percent of earners own nearly a third of all wealth in the country, while the bottom 50 percent of earners own about 2.5 percent. We have known for a long time that such steeply pitched inequality stifles economic growth — and that’s a story we need to keep telling. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9502580165863037}
But answers also need to lie with our own ruling elite. America’s legislators must ease the tremendous — and potentially violent — pressure building up with actions that address the things that contribute to our national feeling of futility: raising the minimum wage, assisting with debt, balancing the tax code so the wealthy pay their fair share, creating solid infrastructure jobs, providing child care and health care coverage for American workers (a move that would also help small employers). {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8389906883239746}
Instead of helplessly witnessing division, we could seek prosperity and opportunity for all our fellow Americans. Imagine the sense of pride and shared purpose that are possible. Such measures supporting consumers would pump money into the system at its base. The economy as a whole becomes more stable when there’s a broad base of people who have cash to spend. Politically, the country would be less prone to eruptions. The young might even feel hope. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9646182656288147}
But it is a rare elite that is willing to think in the long term. Most, like those all across Europe in the aftermath of the plague, instead choose to hold more tightly to what they have, to try to keep a lid clamped on the shared prosperity of others — and by clutching everything to themselves, in the end will push their nations into crisis and be left with nothing but riot, mourning, fear, flame and misery. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8966811299324036}

In the wake of a devastating pandemic, millions of people are dead and many more have had their lives upended. Many of those who survive, worn down by a sense of futility in their work and by the impassable gap between the wealthy and everyone else, refuse to return to their old jobs or quit en masse. Tired of being overworked and underpaid, they feel they deserve a better life. Evidence This could be a story about today, but it is also the pattern that emerged across Europe in the aftermath of one of the deadliest pandemics in recorded history, the Black Death. Rebuttal The struggles over wages and the value of labor that defined the postplague years were in some ways as dramatic as the pandemic itself. Eventually, Europe erupted into violence. Given where we are right now, it’s worth paying attention to the chain of events that led, link by link, from pandemic to panic to bloody uprising. The Black Death, as we now call it, burned its way across the Eurasian continent from 1347 to 1351. Arab historian Ibn Khaldun recalled with horror, “Civilization both in the East and the West was visited by a destructive plague which devastated nations and caused populations to vanish. It swallowed up many of the good things of civilization and wiped them out.’’ Europe, particularly hard-hit, lost somewhere between a third and a half of its population (though historians still dispute the figure). “Many lands and cities were made desolate,” the Italian historian Giovanni Villani wrote in 1348. “And this plague lasted till _____.” He never filled in the end date. He had died of the plague before he could. When we think of the Black Death, we tend to think of the gruesome scenes reported in the cities: the heaped corpses, the trenches where bodies were hurled, unmourned. What contemporaries also found eerie, however, was what they saw in the countryside — not scenes of destruction, but visions of bounty and overgrowth. Fields of ripe grain sitting under the sun. Vines heavy with grapes. These sights were unsettling because they suggested there was no one left alive to bring in the harvests. “Many a fine, noble estate / Lay idle without those to work it,” wrote the poet and composer Guillaume de Machaut, who weathered the plague by hiding locked up in his tower. His poem goes on: The cattle lay aboutThe fields completely abandonedGrazing in the corn and among the grapesAnywhere at all they likedAnd they had no master, no cowherdNo man at all to round them up Following the demographic collapse, there was a severe shortage of labor. And so, after the initial shock, as modern economists would predict, the price of labor skyrocketed. Machaut wrote: No man had his fields plowedHis grain sowed, or his vines tendedThough he’d have paid out triple wagesNo, surely, not even for 20 times the rateBecause so many had died Workers of all kinds — farm laborers, artisans in the cities, even poor parish priests who’d had to minister to the dying — looked at their lives once the pandemic had eased and reassessed what they were worth. They saw a system that was tilted impossibly against them. In England, for example, around half the population was legally tied to the land in serfdom, forced to labor for their local landlord. But suddenly, these workers seemed to have some bargaining power. No longer were they obligated to put up with unreasonable demands. No longer were their employers able to take them for granted. They needed higher wages, for one thing, to deal with the runaway inflation that followed the plague: In England, despite the drop in the cost of some basic commodities like grain, overall prices for consumer goods rose about 27 percent from 1348 to 1350. Laborers complained they couldn’t afford the bare necessities — and if they weren’t paid what they demanded, they walked away from the plow, fled their landlords’ villages, and went off in search of a better deal. We have not suffered as brutal a demographic blow during Covid, but still American workers have reassessed what it means to work and what their labor is worth — and record numbers have left their jobs in the Great Resignation of the past several months. About 3 percent of the total U.S. work force quit in November alone, the Labor Department reported. According to a September poll, 46 percent of full-time employees were either considering or actively looking for a new job. Evidence Low-paying entry-level jobs have become particularly hard to fill, while social media is full of angry discussions about how two or even three jobs are necessary to pay the average rent in the average city. Claim The past few months have seen several high-profile strikes as workers demand fair compensation, with notable union successes at Kellogg and Deere. In this sense, we are seeing echoes of the situation following the Black Death, as workers refuse to return to prepandemic conditions and as they re-evaluate their needs and their value. Too much has changed in the last two years. The world is different. Evidence As we move toward a new, postpandemic era, the tensions in the labor market of the 14th century may have something to teach us about turmoil to come. Claim In the years after the plague, all across Europe, landowners and noblemen watched, first in outrage, then in fury, as people walked away from their jobs and went in search of a better life. What followed was a hysterical wave of legislation that tried to return the economy to where it had been before the plague. Statutes and ordinances froze wages at pre-plague levels; they made it illegal to leave a master’s land, illegal to flee; they, in effect, made unemployment itself illegal. The English Statute of Laborers condemned peasants who fled their manorial contracts to have an ‘F’ branded on their foreheads, for ‘Falsity.’ In Italy, Florence’s new labor laws, openly called “Against Rural Laborers,” declared that those who neglected their master’s farm could be tried as rebels — liable to be dragged through the streets in red-hot chains and buried alive. Pressure continued to build: On one side, a newly emboldened work force demanded a living wage, a chance to flourish; on the other, kings and councils, lords and wealthy commons, were determined that nothing change. Eventually, the pressure became too great. In the second half of the century, violence erupted across Europe. Workers swarmed through the streets of the great towns. They burned manorial records and labor contracts. They destroyed any evidence of their service and their ties to the land. One shocked chronicler in France in 1358 wrote that outraged peasants “killed, slaughtered and massacred without mercy all the nobles whom they could find, even their own lords. Not only this: They leveled the houses and fortresses of the nobles to the ground.” Nobles, in turn, began burning villages and slaughtering laborers. The same French chronicler describes them attacking “not merely those they believed to have done them harm, but all they found, whether in their houses or digging in the vineyards or in the fields.” In England, popular resentment about taxation and outrageous inequities burst into vandalism and violence in the Great Rising of 1381. Mobs executed the chancellor and mounted his messily severed head up on London Bridge. They demanded the end of lordship and recognized no authority but the king’s. Of course, there are many important differences between our financial and political situation and those in the decades after the plague. But the growing sense of frustration among the vast working population of our country connects us to those medieval peasants and artisans who bucked elite expectations to seek a better life for themselves. Over the past four decades, most Americans have seen wages stagnate against the cost of living. The Trump-era tax laws of 2017 legislated breaks that disproportionately benefited the rich. And we, like the medieval peasantry, are surrounded by the spectacle of high net worth individuals and their expensive adventurism. The fortunes of American billionaires grew by 70 percent in the pandemic — and as we learned this summer, some regularly pay nothing or next to nothing in taxes. Evidence The wealthy are taking the rest of us for a ride in a system that is slanted against us. Left and right formulate it differently — but we’re all aware of that gap. Claim The mood of the country is dark and fundamentally splintered. If we do see spasms of violence, I predict they are less likely to resemble the revolutionary politics of the medieval uprisings than the feckless, irrational atrocities that often went on in the shadows of those uprisings, when mobs targeted out-groups: Jews, accused of poisoning wells; the Flemish, accused of stealing English jobs, some of whom were hunted down in the streets and killed on sight. Evidence How, then, do we address the cavernous inequities and avoid the violence of resentment? Claim The American electorate needs a shared story that fits the facts without scapegoating or conspiratorial paranoia. This is a moment ripe for action precisely because we do share some fragments of a story: a weariness and wariness; a sense that we can’t get ahead; an outrage that the powerful are never held accountable. The major medieval uprisings brought together people from many different walks of life, rural and urban: not just peasants but artisans, builders, small-time merchants and even the clergy. A collective labor movement could do something similar for us today. The union victories of the past couple of months are a great example of how workers can come together and take advantage of this moment of dissent — and an example of how C-suite elites can strengthen employee loyalty in a time of high turnover. We also need to more proactively discuss the broadening gap of income inequality that has marked this new century. At this point, the top 1 percent of earners own nearly a third of all wealth in the country, while the bottom 50 percent of earners own about 2.5 percent. We have known for a long time that such steeply pitched inequality stifles economic growth — and that’s a story we need to keep telling. Evidence But answers also need to lie with our own ruling elite. America’s legislators must ease the tremendous — and potentially violent — pressure building up with actions that address the things that contribute to our national feeling of futility: raising the minimum wage, assisting with debt, balancing the tax code so the wealthy pay their fair share, creating solid infrastructure jobs, providing child care and health care coverage for American workers (a move that would also help small employers). Rebuttal Instead of helplessly witnessing division, we could seek prosperity and opportunity for all our fellow Americans. Imagine the sense of pride and shared purpose that are possible. Such measures supporting consumers would pump money into the system at its base. The economy as a whole becomes more stable when there’s a broad base of people who have cash to spend. Politically, the country would be less prone to eruptions. The young might even feel hope. Evidence But it is a rare elite that is willing to think in the long term. Most, like those all across Europe in the aftermath of the plague, instead choose to hold more tightly to what they have, to try to keep a lid clamped on the shared prosperity of others — and by clutching everything to themselves, in the end will push their nations into crisis and be left with nothing but riot, mourning, fear, flame and misery. Rebuttal

nytimes\cuomo-melissa-derosa-sexual-harassment.txt

Using custom data configuration default-a716add4f4121bfd

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-a716add4f4121bfd\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-a716add4f4121bfd\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

A state trooper who says former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo touched her inappropriately when she was a member of his protective detail sued him, his longtime top aide and the New York State Police on Thursday, accusing them of discrimination and retaliation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9385766983032227}
The filing of the lawsuit, which coincided with New York Democrats overwhelmingly endorsing Mr. Cuomo’s successor, Gov. Kathy Hochul, as their nominee in this year’s election, was a reminder that he still faces potential legal jeopardy over the events that hastened his resignation last August. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6548900604248047}
The trooper appears to be the first of 11 women who have accused Mr. Cuomo of sexual misconduct to sue him. Her suit came several weeks after the Oswego County district attorney decided, like his counterparts in four other counties, against charging Mr. Cuomo criminally over acts the former governor’s accusers said had occurred in his jurisdiction. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9824205636978149}
The trooper, identified as Trooper 1, recounts in the suit what she says were repeated instances of unwanted physical contact and numerous suggestive remarks Mr. Cuomo subjected her to after she was transferred onto his security detail, despite lacking the necessary credentials. An investigation by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, corroborated the trooper’s accusations and those of the other women. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9779143333435059}
“He arranged for the service requirements to be changed so that Trooper 1 could be close to him,” the trooper’s suit, filed in Federal District Court in New York’s Eastern District, says. “He then sexually harassed her.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9325500130653381}
In naming Mr. Cuomo’s longtime aide, Melissa DeRosa, and the State Police as defendants, the trooper argues that the former governor’s offending behavior could have been stopped but was not. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.38498055934906006}
“The governor did not act alone,” the suit says. “He was enabled by the machinery of the state.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.44523993134498596}
In a statement, Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, characterized the suit as meritless and claimed that the law firm representing the trooper, Wigdor LLP, “is widely known to use the press to extort settlements on behalf of ‘anonymous claimants.’” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7146795988082886}
Mr. Cuomo, Mr. Azzopardi said in the statement, “will fight every attempt at cheap cash extortions and is anxious to have the dirty politics stop.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.527306079864502}
He continued, “We look forward to justice in a court of law.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6475850939750671}
Valdi Licul, one of the trooper’s lawyers, responded to Mr. Azzopardi by saying Mr. Cuomo was “only making his legal problems worse by lashing out at his victim and her counsel with false and defamatory statements intended to further retaliate against her and defame us.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6710543036460876}
Like Mr. Azzopardi, Paul Shechtman, a lawyer for Ms. DeRosa, was dismissive of the suit. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5792261362075806}
“We are only aware of this case from Twitter, but according to the trooper’s own testimony Melissa’s only interaction with her was to say ‘hello and goodbye,’” Mr. Shechtman said in the statement. “It is not a viable case anywhere in America and is beyond frivolous.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8256938457489014}
The suit does not make specific allegations against the State Police, but accuses the agency, along with Mr. Cuomo and Ms. DeRosa, of discrimination and retaliation. A Wigdor firm spokesman said the agency was named as a defendant because it is the trooper’s employer. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8687835335731506}
A State Police spokesman declined to comment, citing a policy against doing so in active litigation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.45596936345100403}
The trooper repeats in her suit what she told the attorney general’s investigators: that the governor began to flirt with her shortly after they first met, that he spoke with senior members of his security staff about having her join the protective detail, and that she was soon given the coveted assignment. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8770608305931091}
Among other things, the suit says that at an event at Belmont Park, in Elmont, N.Y., in September 2019, Mr. Cuomo ran the palm of his hand over her navel and slid it across her waist to her right hip, where her gun was holstered. The act, the suit says, made her feel “violated.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9726640582084656}
A senior State Police investigator “fully corroborated” the female trooper’s account of the episode, according to the report that came out of the attorney general’s inquiry. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5593034029006958}
Mr. Cuomo has consistently attacked the investigation overseen by Ms. James as a politically motivated exercise by a fellow Democrat who had her own designs on the governor’s job. Ms. James announced a run for governor in October, but abandoned it a few weeks later. On Thursday, New York Democrats endorsed her bid for re-election this year. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9071846604347229}
Mr. Cuomo has denied ever acting inappropriately with the women who have accused him of sexual misconduct, saying they misconstrued behavior on his part that might have been out of step with the times but was not meant to be sexual. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3975694477558136}
In dismissing the substance of the trooper’s claims, Mr. Azzopardi noted in his statement the district attorneys’ decisions not to file criminal charges against Mr. Cuomo. He did not mention that none of the five had discounted the women’s accusations, and that several had used words like “deeply troubling” and “credible” to characterize the allegations. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.41245174407958984}

A state trooper who says former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo touched her inappropriately when she was a member of his protective detail sued him, his longtime top aide and the New York State Police on Thursday, accusing them of discrimination and retaliation. The filing of the lawsuit, which coincided with New York Democrats overwhelmingly endorsing Mr. Cuomo’s successor, Gov. Kathy Hochul, as their nominee in this year’s election, was a reminder that he still faces potential legal jeopardy over the events that hastened his resignation last August. The trooper appears to be the first of 11 women who have accused Mr. Cuomo of sexual misconduct to sue him. Her suit came several weeks after the Oswego County district attorney decided, like his counterparts in four other counties, against charging Mr. Cuomo criminally over acts the former governor’s accusers said had occurred in his jurisdiction. The trooper, identified as Trooper 1, recounts in the suit what she says were repeated instances of unwanted physical contact and numerous suggestive remarks Mr. Cuomo subjected her to after she was transferred onto his security detail, despite lacking the necessary credentials. An investigation by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, corroborated the trooper’s accusations and those of the other women. “He arranged for the service requirements to be changed so that Trooper 1 could be close to him,” the trooper’s suit, filed in Federal District Court in New York’s Eastern District, says. “He then sexually harassed her.” In naming Mr. Cuomo’s longtime aide, Melissa DeRosa, and the State Police as defendants, the trooper argues that the former governor’s offending behavior could have been stopped but was not. “The governor did not act alone,” the suit says. “He was enabled by the machinery of the state.” In a statement, Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, characterized the suit as meritless and claimed that the law firm representing the trooper, Wigdor LLP, “is widely known to use the press to extort settlements on behalf of ‘anonymous claimants.’” Mr. Cuomo, Mr. Azzopardi said in the statement, “will fight every attempt at cheap cash extortions and is anxious to have the dirty politics stop.” Evidence He continued, “We look forward to justice in a court of law.” Claim Valdi Licul, one of the trooper’s lawyers, responded to Mr. Azzopardi by saying Mr. Cuomo was “only making his legal problems worse by lashing out at his victim and her counsel with false and defamatory statements intended to further retaliate against her and defame us.” Like Mr. Azzopardi, Paul Shechtman, a lawyer for Ms. DeRosa, was dismissive of the suit. “We are only aware of this case from Twitter, but according to the trooper’s own testimony Melissa’s only interaction with her was to say ‘hello and goodbye,’” Mr. Shechtman said in the statement. “It is not a viable case anywhere in America and is beyond frivolous.” The suit does not make specific allegations against the State Police, but accuses the agency, along with Mr. Cuomo and Ms. DeRosa, of discrimination and retaliation. A Wigdor firm spokesman said the agency was named as a defendant because it is the trooper’s employer. A State Police spokesman declined to comment, citing a policy against doing so in active litigation. The trooper repeats in her suit what she told the attorney general’s investigators: that the governor began to flirt with her shortly after they first met, that he spoke with senior members of his security staff about having her join the protective detail, and that she was soon given the coveted assignment. Among other things, the suit says that at an event at Belmont Park, in Elmont, N.Y., in September 2019, Mr. Cuomo ran the palm of his hand over her navel and slid it across her waist to her right hip, where her gun was holstered. The act, the suit says, made her feel “violated.” A senior State Police investigator “fully corroborated” the female trooper’s account of the episode, according to the report that came out of the attorney general’s inquiry. Mr. Cuomo has consistently attacked the investigation overseen by Ms. James as a politically motivated exercise by a fellow Democrat who had her own designs on the governor’s job. Ms. James announced a run for governor in October, but abandoned it a few weeks later. On Thursday, New York Democrats endorsed her bid for re-election this year. Mr. Cuomo has denied ever acting inappropriately with the women who have accused him of sexual misconduct, saying they misconstrued behavior on his part that might have been out of step with the times but was not meant to be sexual. In dismissing the substance of the trooper’s claims, Mr. Azzopardi noted in his statement the district attorneys’ decisions not to file criminal charges against Mr. Cuomo. He did not mention that none of the five had discounted the women’s accusations, and that several had used words like “deeply troubling” and “credible” to characterize the allegations. Evidence

nytimes\death-certificate-cause.txt

Using custom data configuration default-4c100879187442bf

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-4c100879187442bf\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-4c100879187442bf\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

A combination of journalistic curiosity and advancing years prompts me to read obituaries regularly. I routinely check for ages and causes of death that can help inform what I write about and how I live. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6441497206687927}
Increasingly, I’ve noted in published reports that people are often said to die of “complications of” some disease, rather than the disease itself. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7387056946754456}
For example, in an obituary published on Jan. 9 in The New York Times for Dwayne Hickman, who starred in the television sitcom “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,” a spokesman attributed his death at 87 to “complications of Parkinson’s disease.” And another, published two days earlier for Lani Guinier, a legal scholar and champion of voting rights, stated that she succumbed at 71 to “complications of Alzheimer’s disease.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9927451014518738}
What, I wondered, does that mean? How is it recorded on death certificates? And does it result in accurate mortality statistics needed for assigning priorities for medical research and allocating resources? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.524890124797821}
I looked up the complications of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. Someone with Parkinson’s disease may have poor balance and die from a fall, for example, but Parkinson’s is actually the underlying cause of the death. Similarly, people with Alzheimer’s disease often have difficulty swallowing and may accidentally inhale food and develop a fatal pneumonia; such secondary infections are listed as the cause of death for as many as two-thirds of these patients. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9930073022842407}
The result can be seriously misleading information, said Dr. James Gill, the chief medical examiner for the state of Connecticut. While pneumonia may be the proximate cause of death, Alzheimer’s disease, which is why the patient developed pneumonia in the first place, is the “specific underlying cause that started the chain of events and should be listed as the cause of death,” he said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8711335062980652}
In fact, one study from 2014 suggested that the real death rate from Alzheimer’s in 2010 may have been about six times higher than the number of deaths reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Likewise, if someone with Covid-19 develops pneumonia and dies, their death certificate might say that pneumonia was the cause of death, but in reality it was a coronavirus infection. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9287118911743164}
I asked Dr. Gill, who heads the College of American Pathologists Forensic Pathology Committee, why this matters. “In order to prevent deaths, we want to know what’s causing them, which influences medical practice and the awarding of research grants,” he said. “If many dementia deaths are hidden, the disease is not getting enough funding.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.864777684211731}
More dramatically, Dr. Gill added, “Having accurate death certificates saves lives. It enables us to identify new and trending diseases and take appropriate action.” If someone is living or working in a building with a poorly installed or maintained furnace, for instance, they may be exposed to toxic levels of carbon monoxide that could eventually cause fatal cardiac and respiratory failure. The cause of death might be recorded as cardiac arrest, but in fact was a result of carbon monoxide poisoning, and the presence of the faulty appliance would likely be missed and could result in further casualties. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9883013367652893}
In a research review published in the magazine Today’s Geriatric Medicine, Dr. Emily Carter, a geriatrician affiliated with the Maine Medical Center, and co-authors noted that the data submitted on death certificates can affect families with regard to life insurance, estate settlement, genetic risk factors and finding closure. They estimate that major errors, like incorrect cause or manner of death, occur in 33 to 40 percent of death certificates that are completed at academic institutions like their own in the United States. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9742436408996582}
An analysis of death certificates at their own institution found that cardiac or respiratory arrest were incorrectly entered as the immediate cause of death on 11 of the 50 documents they reviewed. As Dr. Gill said, “Everyone who dies, dies of cardiopulmonary arrest. The critical question is: Why did this happen? Let’s say someone dies of a stomach hemorrhage. What caused it? Stomach cancer, an ulcer or what?” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9853864908218384}
There are many reasons for the high rate of inaccurate or incomplete death certificates, starting with the meager attention paid to the subject in medical school and the hectic pace in many medical settings. Speed is sometimes dictated by the need to release a body to a funeral home for burial or cremation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.728514552116394}
The C.D.C. has estimated that 20 to 30 percent of death certificates, though not necessarily inaccurate, “have issues with completeness.” The agency stated that heavy workloads, insufficient information about a death or inadequate training can result in death certificates that are incomplete or inaccurate. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8949429392814636}
Furthermore, many deaths are certified by coroners, who are elected or appointed to their positions and may have bachelor’s degrees in forensic science, but are usually not doctors. They can be subject to political or family influence and may fail, for example, to list opioid overdose as a cause of death. Even when death certificates are completed by medical examiners, who are usually doctors, they may not be trained in forensic pathology and could miss the real cause of death. A death following a fall, for example, might have been accidental, or it could have resulted from an underlying disease or even homicide. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9940342307090759}
According to a blog post from Womble Bond Dickinson, a trans-Atlantic law firm with headquarters in London, “the death certificate may be critical in a lawsuit” to help determine “the nature of the death,” factors that contributed to it, when it occurred and illnesses that may have played a role. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7280991077423096}
If the death was the result of a medical illness, the death certificate is usually completed by the physician in charge, Dr. Carter and her colleagues wrote in their review. However, they emphasized, a medical examiner should certify all other causes, including deaths related to hip fracture which could have resulted from an accident, and deaths related to a history of malicious injury that could be a homicide. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9277879595756531}
Unfortunately, despite what you may see in films and on TV, autopsies today are performed less and less often. Families often have to pay for them out of pocket. Between the high cost of autopsies and the increasingly limited resources to do them, they have become a dying breed. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.5184556245803833}
Families can often benefit from knowing the real cause of a relative’s or housemate’s death. Might there be a payout from life insurance? Is there a home problem, like a slippery floor, lack of grab bars in the bathroom or a faulty furnace, that needs correction? Is there an inherited medical condition that can be mitigated to avert further casualties? Could malpractice have caused or contributed to the death? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9493274092674255}
If a death certificate contains errors that warrant correction, the sooner that’s done the better. In New York State, the funeral firm or medical certifier can usually help with a correction request that’s made within six months of the death. Beyond six months, you would have to fill out an application for a correction. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9823192954063416}

A combination of journalistic curiosity and advancing years prompts me to read obituaries regularly. I routinely check for ages and causes of death that can help inform what I write about and how I live. Evidence Increasingly, I’ve noted in published reports that people are often said to die of “complications of” some disease, rather than the disease itself. Claim For example, in an obituary published on Jan. 9 in The New York Times for Dwayne Hickman, who starred in the television sitcom “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,” a spokesman attributed his death at 87 to “complications of Parkinson’s disease.” And another, published two days earlier for Lani Guinier, a legal scholar and champion of voting rights, stated that she succumbed at 71 to “complications of Alzheimer’s disease.” What, I wondered, does that mean? How is it recorded on death certificates? And does it result in accurate mortality statistics needed for assigning priorities for medical research and allocating resources? I looked up the complications of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. Someone with Parkinson’s disease may have poor balance and die from a fall, for example, but Parkinson’s is actually the underlying cause of the death. Similarly, people with Alzheimer’s disease often have difficulty swallowing and may accidentally inhale food and develop a fatal pneumonia; such secondary infections are listed as the cause of death for as many as two-thirds of these patients. The result can be seriously misleading information, said Dr. James Gill, the chief medical examiner for the state of Connecticut. While pneumonia may be the proximate cause of death, Alzheimer’s disease, which is why the patient developed pneumonia in the first place, is the “specific underlying cause that started the chain of events and should be listed as the cause of death,” he said. In fact, one study from 2014 suggested that the real death rate from Alzheimer’s in 2010 may have been about six times higher than the number of deaths reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Likewise, if someone with Covid-19 develops pneumonia and dies, their death certificate might say that pneumonia was the cause of death, but in reality it was a coronavirus infection. I asked Dr. Gill, who heads the College of American Pathologists Forensic Pathology Committee, why this matters. “In order to prevent deaths, we want to know what’s causing them, which influences medical practice and the awarding of research grants,” he said. “If many dementia deaths are hidden, the disease is not getting enough funding.” More dramatically, Dr. Gill added, “Having accurate death certificates saves lives. It enables us to identify new and trending diseases and take appropriate action.” If someone is living or working in a building with a poorly installed or maintained furnace, for instance, they may be exposed to toxic levels of carbon monoxide that could eventually cause fatal cardiac and respiratory failure. The cause of death might be recorded as cardiac arrest, but in fact was a result of carbon monoxide poisoning, and the presence of the faulty appliance would likely be missed and could result in further casualties. In a research review published in the magazine Today’s Geriatric Medicine, Dr. Emily Carter, a geriatrician affiliated with the Maine Medical Center, and co-authors noted that the data submitted on death certificates can affect families with regard to life insurance, estate settlement, genetic risk factors and finding closure. They estimate that major errors, like incorrect cause or manner of death, occur in 33 to 40 percent of death certificates that are completed at academic institutions like their own in the United States. An analysis of death certificates at their own institution found that cardiac or respiratory arrest were incorrectly entered as the immediate cause of death on 11 of the 50 documents they reviewed. As Dr. Gill said, “Everyone who dies, dies of cardiopulmonary arrest. The critical question is: Why did this happen? Let’s say someone dies of a stomach hemorrhage. What caused it? Stomach cancer, an ulcer or what?” There are many reasons for the high rate of inaccurate or incomplete death certificates, starting with the meager attention paid to the subject in medical school and the hectic pace in many medical settings. Speed is sometimes dictated by the need to release a body to a funeral home for burial or cremation. The C.D.C. has estimated that 20 to 30 percent of death certificates, though not necessarily inaccurate, “have issues with completeness.” The agency stated that heavy workloads, insufficient information about a death or inadequate training can result in death certificates that are incomplete or inaccurate. Furthermore, many deaths are certified by coroners, who are elected or appointed to their positions and may have bachelor’s degrees in forensic science, but are usually not doctors. They can be subject to political or family influence and may fail, for example, to list opioid overdose as a cause of death. Even when death certificates are completed by medical examiners, who are usually doctors, they may not be trained in forensic pathology and could miss the real cause of death. A death following a fall, for example, might have been accidental, or it could have resulted from an underlying disease or even homicide. According to a blog post from Womble Bond Dickinson, a trans-Atlantic law firm with headquarters in London, “the death certificate may be critical in a lawsuit” to help determine “the nature of the death,” factors that contributed to it, when it occurred and illnesses that may have played a role. If the death was the result of a medical illness, the death certificate is usually completed by the physician in charge, Dr. Carter and her colleagues wrote in their review. However, they emphasized, a medical examiner should certify all other causes, including deaths related to hip fracture which could have resulted from an accident, and deaths related to a history of malicious injury that could be a homicide. Evidence Unfortunately, despite what you may see in films and on TV, autopsies today are performed less and less often. Families often have to pay for them out of pocket. Between the high cost of autopsies and the increasingly limited resources to do them, they have become a dying breed. Rebuttal Families can often benefit from knowing the real cause of a relative’s or housemate’s death. Might there be a payout from life insurance? Is there a home problem, like a slippery floor, lack of grab bars in the bathroom or a faulty furnace, that needs correction? Is there an inherited medical condition that can be mitigated to avert further casualties? Could malpractice have caused or contributed to the death? If a death certificate contains errors that warrant correction, the sooner that’s done the better. In New York State, the funeral firm or medical certifier can usually help with a correction request that’s made within six months of the death. Beyond six months, you would have to fill out an application for a correction. Evidence

nytimes\depression-anxiety-physical-health.txt

Using custom data configuration default-170df54b35f8d962

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-170df54b35f8d962\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-170df54b35f8d962\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

It’s no surprise that when a person gets a diagnosis of heart disease, cancer or some other life-limiting or life-threatening physical ailment, they become anxious or depressed. But the reverse can also be true: Undue anxiety or depression can foster the development of a serious physical disease, and even impede the ability to withstand or recover from one. The potential consequences are particularly timely, as the ongoing stress and disruptions of the pandemic continue to take a toll on mental health. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9492567181587219}
The human organism does not recognize the medical profession’s artificial separation of mental and physical ills. Rather, mind and body form a two-way street. What happens inside a person’s head can have damaging effects throughout the body, as well as the other way around. An untreated mental illness can significantly increase the risk of becoming physically ill, and physical disorders may result in behaviors that make mental conditions worse. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8599570989608765}
In studies that tracked how patients with breast cancer fared, for example, Dr. David Spiegel and his colleagues at Stanford University School of Medicine showed decades ago that women whose depression was easing lived longer than those whose depression was getting worse. His research and other studies have clearly shown that “the brain is intimately connected to the body and the body to the brain,” Dr. Spiegel said in an interview. “The body tends to react to mental stress as if it was a physical stress.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9927863478660583}
Despite such evidence, he and other experts say, chronic emotional distress is too often overlooked by doctors. Commonly, a physician will prescribe a therapy for physical ailments like heart disease or diabetes, only to wonder why some patients get worse instead of better. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.6513345241546631}
Many people are reluctant to seek treatment for emotional ills. Some people with anxiety or depression may fear being stigmatized, even if they recognize they have a serious psychological problem. Many attempt to self-treat their emotional distress by adopting behaviors like drinking too much or abusing drugs, which only adds insult to their pre-existing injury. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8741701245307922}
And sometimes, family and friends inadvertently reinforce a person’s denial of mental distress by labeling it as “that’s just the way he is” and do nothing to encourage them to seek professional help. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5526499152183533}
Anxiety disorders affect nearly 20 percent of American adults. That means millions are beset by an overabundance of the fight-or-flight response that primes the body for action. When you’re stressed, the brain responds by prompting the release of cortisol, nature’s built-in alarm system. It evolved to help animals facing physical threats by increasing respiration, raising the heart rate and redirecting blood flow from abdominal organs to muscles that assist in confronting or escaping danger. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.991790771484375}
These protective actions stem from the neurotransmitters epinephrine and norepinephrine, which stimulate the sympathetic nervous system and put the body on high alert. But when they are invoked too often and indiscriminately, the chronic overstimulation can result in all manner of physical ills, including digestive symptoms like indigestion, cramps, diarrhea or constipation, and an increased risk of heart attack or stroke. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9689095616340637}
Depression, while less common than chronic anxiety, can have even more devastating effects on physical health. While it’s normal to feel depressed from time to time, more than 6 percent of adults have such persistent feelings of depression that it disrupts personal relationships, interferes with work and play, and impairs their ability to cope with the challenges of daily life. Persistent depression can also exacerbate a person’s perception of pain and increase their chances of developing chronic pain. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8805525898933411}
“Depression diminishes a person’s capacity to analyze and respond rationally to stress,” Dr. Spiegel said. “They end up on a vicious cycle with limited capacity to get out of a negative mental state.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7700169682502747}
Potentially making matters worse, undue anxiety and depression often coexist, leaving people vulnerable to a panoply of physical ailments and an inability to adopt and stick with needed therapy. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4543617367744446}
A study of 1,204 elderly Korean men and women initially evaluated for depression and anxiety found that two years later, these emotional disorders increased their risk of physical disorders and disability. Anxiety alone was linked with heart disease, depression alone was linked with asthma, and the two together were linked with eyesight problems, persistent cough, asthma, hypertension, heart disease and gastrointestinal problems. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9866144061088562}
Although persistent anxiety and depression are highly treatable with medications, cognitive behavioral therapy and talk therapy, without treatment these conditions tend to get worse. According to Dr. John Frownfelter, treatment for any condition works better when doctors understand “the pressures patients face that affect their behavior and result in clinical harm.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8988074660301208}
Dr. Frownfelter is an internist and chief medical officer of a start-up called Jvion. The organization uses artificial intelligence to identify not just medical factors but psychological, social and behavioral ones as well that can impact the effectiveness of treatment on patients’ health. Its aim is to foster more holistic approaches to treatment that address the whole patient, body and mind combined. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6474684476852417}
The analyses used by Jvion, a Hindi word meaning life-giving, could alert a doctor when underlying depression might be hindering the effectiveness of prescribed treatments for another condition. For example, patients being treated for diabetes who are feeling hopeless may fail to improve because they take their prescribed medication only sporadically and don’t follow a proper diet, Dr. Frownfelter said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.99293452501297}
“We often talk about depression as a complication of chronic illness,” Dr. Frownfelter wrote in Medpage Today in July. “But what we don’t talk about enough is how depression can lead to chronic disease. Patients with depression may not have the motivation to exercise regularly or cook healthy meals. Many also have trouble getting adequate sleep.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9729542136192322}
Some changes to medical care during the pandemic have greatly increased patient access to depression and anxiety treatment. The expansion of telehealth has enabled patients to access treatment by psychotherapists who may be as far as a continent away. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8839636445045471}
Patients may also be able to treat themselves without the direct help of a therapist. For example, Dr. Spiegel and his co-workers created an app called Reveri that teaches people self-hypnosis techniques designed to help reduce stress and anxiety, improve sleep, reduce pain and suppress or quit smoking. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9855847954750061}
Improving sleep is especially helpful, Dr. Spiegel said, because “it enhances a person’s ability to regulate the stress response system and not get stuck in a mental rut.” Data demonstrating the effectiveness of the Reveri app has been collected but not yet published, he said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9037753939628601}

It’s no surprise that when a person gets a diagnosis of heart disease, cancer or some other life-limiting or life-threatening physical ailment, they become anxious or depressed. But the reverse can also be true: Undue anxiety or depression can foster the development of a serious physical disease, and even impede the ability to withstand or recover from one. The potential consequences are particularly timely, as the ongoing stress and disruptions of the pandemic continue to take a toll on mental health. The human organism does not recognize the medical profession’s artificial separation of mental and physical ills. Rather, mind and body form a two-way street. What happens inside a person’s head can have damaging effects throughout the body, as well as the other way around. An untreated mental illness can significantly increase the risk of becoming physically ill, and physical disorders may result in behaviors that make mental conditions worse. In studies that tracked how patients with breast cancer fared, for example, Dr. David Spiegel and his colleagues at Stanford University School of Medicine showed decades ago that women whose depression was easing lived longer than those whose depression was getting worse. His research and other studies have clearly shown that “the brain is intimately connected to the body and the body to the brain,” Dr. Spiegel said in an interview. “The body tends to react to mental stress as if it was a physical stress.” Evidence Despite such evidence, he and other experts say, chronic emotional distress is too often overlooked by doctors. Commonly, a physician will prescribe a therapy for physical ailments like heart disease or diabetes, only to wonder why some patients get worse instead of better. Rebuttal Many people are reluctant to seek treatment for emotional ills. Some people with anxiety or depression may fear being stigmatized, even if they recognize they have a serious psychological problem. Many attempt to self-treat their emotional distress by adopting behaviors like drinking too much or abusing drugs, which only adds insult to their pre-existing injury. And sometimes, family and friends inadvertently reinforce a person’s denial of mental distress by labeling it as “that’s just the way he is” and do nothing to encourage them to seek professional help. Anxiety disorders affect nearly 20 percent of American adults. That means millions are beset by an overabundance of the fight-or-flight response that primes the body for action. When you’re stressed, the brain responds by prompting the release of cortisol, nature’s built-in alarm system. It evolved to help animals facing physical threats by increasing respiration, raising the heart rate and redirecting blood flow from abdominal organs to muscles that assist in confronting or escaping danger. These protective actions stem from the neurotransmitters epinephrine and norepinephrine, which stimulate the sympathetic nervous system and put the body on high alert. But when they are invoked too often and indiscriminately, the chronic overstimulation can result in all manner of physical ills, including digestive symptoms like indigestion, cramps, diarrhea or constipation, and an increased risk of heart attack or stroke. Depression, while less common than chronic anxiety, can have even more devastating effects on physical health. While it’s normal to feel depressed from time to time, more than 6 percent of adults have such persistent feelings of depression that it disrupts personal relationships, interferes with work and play, and impairs their ability to cope with the challenges of daily life. Persistent depression can also exacerbate a person’s perception of pain and increase their chances of developing chronic pain. “Depression diminishes a person’s capacity to analyze and respond rationally to stress,” Dr. Spiegel said. “They end up on a vicious cycle with limited capacity to get out of a negative mental state.” Potentially making matters worse, undue anxiety and depression often coexist, leaving people vulnerable to a panoply of physical ailments and an inability to adopt and stick with needed therapy. A study of 1,204 elderly Korean men and women initially evaluated for depression and anxiety found that two years later, these emotional disorders increased their risk of physical disorders and disability. Anxiety alone was linked with heart disease, depression alone was linked with asthma, and the two together were linked with eyesight problems, persistent cough, asthma, hypertension, heart disease and gastrointestinal problems. Although persistent anxiety and depression are highly treatable with medications, cognitive behavioral therapy and talk therapy, without treatment these conditions tend to get worse. According to Dr. John Frownfelter, treatment for any condition works better when doctors understand “the pressures patients face that affect their behavior and result in clinical harm.” Dr. Frownfelter is an internist and chief medical officer of a start-up called Jvion. The organization uses artificial intelligence to identify not just medical factors but psychological, social and behavioral ones as well that can impact the effectiveness of treatment on patients’ health. Its aim is to foster more holistic approaches to treatment that address the whole patient, body and mind combined. The analyses used by Jvion, a Hindi word meaning life-giving, could alert a doctor when underlying depression might be hindering the effectiveness of prescribed treatments for another condition. For example, patients being treated for diabetes who are feeling hopeless may fail to improve because they take their prescribed medication only sporadically and don’t follow a proper diet, Dr. Frownfelter said. “We often talk about depression as a complication of chronic illness,” Dr. Frownfelter wrote in Medpage Today in July. “But what we don’t talk about enough is how depression can lead to chronic disease. Patients with depression may not have the motivation to exercise regularly or cook healthy meals. Many also have trouble getting adequate sleep.” Some changes to medical care during the pandemic have greatly increased patient access to depression and anxiety treatment. The expansion of telehealth has enabled patients to access treatment by psychotherapists who may be as far as a continent away. Patients may also be able to treat themselves without the direct help of a therapist. For example, Dr. Spiegel and his co-workers created an app called Reveri that teaches people self-hypnosis techniques designed to help reduce stress and anxiety, improve sleep, reduce pain and suppress or quit smoking. Improving sleep is especially helpful, Dr. Spiegel said, because “it enhances a person’s ability to regulate the stress response system and not get stuck in a mental rut.” Data demonstrating the effectiveness of the Reveri app has been collected but not yet published, he said. Evidence

nytimes\dog-review.txt

Using custom data configuration default-2da713e065bae8af

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-2da713e065bae8af\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-2da713e065bae8af\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Road comedies that pair an animal and a movie star are a minor genre unto themselves. The best examples, in my opinion, involve Clint Eastwood and an orangutan named Clyde, though the recent one with Eastwood and a rooster wasn’t bad. Channing Tatum is a different kind of screen presence — sweeter, chattier, bulkier — and in “Dog,” which he directed with Reid Carolin, he amiably shares the screen with (spoiler alert!) a dog. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9206098318099976}
She is a Belgian Malinois named Lulu (played by three talented canines), and she has served in the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. So has Tatum’s character, Jackson Briggs, a former Army Ranger living in a cabin in the Northwest. A history of brain injuries has kept him out of action, but he hopes that a good word from his commanding officer will give him a chance to go back overseas. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.977077841758728}
To make that happen, Jackson agrees to accompany Lulu from Fort Lewis, Wash., to Nogales, Ariz. The reason for the road trip is the funeral of her handler, a Ranger whose death in a car crash haunts Jackson and the film. While “Dog” is a man-beast buddy movie, it’s also preoccupied with grief, trauma and the challenges of post-combat life. Lulu and Jackson are both wounded warriors who must learn to trust each other and help each other heal. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8848344087600708}
Though much is made of Lulu’s ferociousness, the film’s humor is gentle and mostly unthreatening. She chews up the seats in Jackson’s already battered Ford Bronco, disrupts his potential threesome with a pair of Tantra practitioners in Portland and causes an unfortunate ruckus in a San Francisco hotel. Jackson has variously awkward, hostile and touching human encounters, notably with New Age cannabis growers and a resentful, racist police officer. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8524641394615173}
“Dog” is unabashedly sentimental. A movie about a dog and a soldier could hardly be otherwise. Luckily, Tatum’s self-deprecating charm and Carolin’s script keep the story on the tolerable side of maudlin. It’s also circumspect about Lulu and Jackson’s experiences of war, which is vaguely understood as something horrible but also glorious. Neither one is as complex as a real dog or a real man would be, which makes the movie an easy watch, but at the cost of some credibility. It’s friendly and eager to please, but it won’t quite hunt. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6639435291290283}

Road comedies that pair an animal and a movie star are a minor genre unto themselves. The best examples, in my opinion, involve Clint Eastwood and an orangutan named Clyde, though the recent one with Eastwood and a rooster wasn’t bad. Channing Tatum is a different kind of screen presence — sweeter, chattier, bulkier — and in “Dog,” which he directed with Reid Carolin, he amiably shares the screen with (spoiler alert!) a dog. She is a Belgian Malinois named Lulu (played by three talented canines), and she has served in the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. So has Tatum’s character, Jackson Briggs, a former Army Ranger living in a cabin in the Northwest. A history of brain injuries has kept him out of action, but he hopes that a good word from his commanding officer will give him a chance to go back overseas. To make that happen, Jackson agrees to accompany Lulu from Fort Lewis, Wash., to Nogales, Ariz. The reason for the road trip is the funeral of her handler, a Ranger whose death in a car crash haunts Jackson and the film. While “Dog” is a man-beast buddy movie, it’s also preoccupied with grief, trauma and the challenges of post-combat life. Lulu and Jackson are both wounded warriors who must learn to trust each other and help each other heal. Though much is made of Lulu’s ferociousness, the film’s humor is gentle and mostly unthreatening. She chews up the seats in Jackson’s already battered Ford Bronco, disrupts his potential threesome with a pair of Tantra practitioners in Portland and causes an unfortunate ruckus in a San Francisco hotel. Jackson has variously awkward, hostile and touching human encounters, notably with New Age cannabis growers and a resentful, racist police officer. “Dog” is unabashedly sentimental. A movie about a dog and a soldier could hardly be otherwise. Luckily, Tatum’s self-deprecating charm and Carolin’s script keep the story on the tolerable side of maudlin. It’s also circumspect about Lulu and Jackson’s experiences of war, which is vaguely understood as something horrible but also glorious. Neither one is as complex as a real dog or a real man would be, which makes the movie an easy watch, but at the cost of some credibility. It’s friendly and eager to please, but it won’t quite hunt. Evidence

nytimes\durham-right-wing-media-trump.txt

Using custom data configuration default-06033861187e33a3

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-06033861187e33a3\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-06033861187e33a3\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

WASHINGTON — John H. Durham, the Trump-era special counsel scrutinizing the investigation into Russia’s 2016 election interference, distanced himself on Thursday from false reports by right-wing news outlets that a motion he recently filed said Hillary Clinton’s campaign had paid to spy on Trump White House servers. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9395196437835693}
Citing a barrage of such reports on Fox News and elsewhere based on the prosecutor’s Feb. 11 filing, defense lawyers for a Democratic-linked cybersecurity lawyer, Michael Sussmann, have accused the special counsel of including unnecessary and misleading information in filings “plainly intended to politicize this case, inflame media coverage and taint the jury pool.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9555286765098572}
In a filing on Thursday, Mr. Durham defended himself, saying those accusations about his intentions were “simply not true.” He said he had “valid and straightforward reasons” for including the information in the Feb. 11 filing that set off the firestorm, while disavowing responsibility for how certain news outlets had interpreted and portrayed it. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7375777959823608}
“If third parties or members of the media have overstated, understated or otherwise misinterpreted facts contained in the government’s motion, that does not in any way undermine the valid reasons for the government’s inclusion of this information,” he wrote. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.47210609912872314}
But even as he did not acknowledge any problem with how he couched his filing last week, Mr. Durham said he would make future filings under seal if they contained “information that legitimately gives rise to privacy issues or other concerns that might overcome the presumption of public access to judicial documents.” {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.7589167356491089}
Former President Donald J. Trump has seized on the inaccurate reporting to declare that there is now “indisputable evidence” of a Clinton campaign conspiracy against him — and to suggest that there ought to be executions. Mr. Trump, Fox News hosts and others have also criticized mainstream journalists for not covering the purported revelation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9746213555335999}
The dispute traces back to a pretrial motion in the case Mr. Durham has brought against Mr. Sussmann accusing him of making a false statement during a September 2016 meeting with the F.B.I. where he relayed concerns about possible cyberlinks between Mr. Trump and Russia. The bureau later dismissed those as unfounded. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.784356415271759}
Mr. Durham says Mr. Sussmann falsely told the F.B.I. official he had no clients, but was really there on behalf of both the Clinton campaign and a technology executive named Rodney Joffe. Mr. Sussmann denies ever saying that, while maintaining he was only there on behalf of Mr. Joffe — not the campaign. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9718393087387085}
Several sentences of the filing recounted a second meeting, in February 2017, where Mr. Sussmann had presented different concerns about odd internet data and Russia to the C.I.A., which came from the same cybersecurity researchers who developed the suspicions he had presented to the F.B.I. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8912829160690308}
At the C.I.A. meeting, Mr. Sussmann shared concerns about data that suggested that someone using a Russian-made smartphone may have been connecting to networks at Trump Tower and the White House, among other places. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5091454982757568}
Mr. Sussmann had obtained that information from Mr. Joffe. The court filing also stated that Mr. Joffe’s company, Neustar, had helped maintain internet-related servers for the White House, and accused Mr. Joffe — whom Mr. Durham has not charged with any crime — and his associates of having “exploited this arrangement” by mining certain records to gather derogatory information about Mr. Trump. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9765565395355225}
In the fall, The New York Times had reported on Mr. Sussmann’s C.I.A. meeting and the concerns he had relayed about the data suggesting the presence of Russian-made YotaPhones — smartphones that are rarely seen in the United States — in proximity to Mr. Trump and in the White House. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8948636054992676}
But over the weekend, the conservative news media treated those sentences in Mr. Durham’s filing as a new revelation while significantly embellishing what it had said. Mr. Durham, some outlets inaccurately reported, had said he had discovered that the Clinton campaign had paid Mr. Joffe’s company to spy on Mr. Trump. But the campaign had not paid his company, and the filing did not say so. Some outlets also quoted Mr. Durham’s filing as using the word “infiltrate,” a word it did not contain. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.5183305740356445}
Most important, the coverage about purported spying on the Trump White House was premised on the idea that the White House network data involved came from when Mr. Trump was president. But Mr. Durham’s filing did not say when it was from. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8063382506370544}
Lawyers for a Georgia Institute of Technology data scientist who helped analyze the Yota data said on Monday that the data came from the Obama presidency. Mr. Sussmann’s lawyers said the same in a filing on Monday night complaining about Mr. Durham’s conduct. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9766603708267212}
Mr. Durham did not directly address that basic factual dispute. But his explanation for why he included the information about the matter in the earlier filing implicitly confirmed that Mr. Sussmann had conveyed concerns about White House data that came from before Mr. Trump was president. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4566665291786194}
The purpose of the earlier filing was to ask a judge to look at potential conflicts of interest on Mr. Sussmann’s legal team. Mr. Durham included those paragraphs, he wrote, in part because one of the potential conflicts was that a member of the defense had worked for the White House “during relevant events that involved” the White House. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9123700857162476}
The defense lawyer in question is Michael Bosworth, who was a deputy White House counsel in the Obama administration. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.49381086230278015}
Separately on Thursday, lawyers for Mr. Sussmann filed a pretrial motion asking a judge to dismiss the case. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4687598645687103}
They argued that even if Mr. Sussmann did falsely say at the F.B.I. meeting that he had no client — which they deny — that would not rise to a “material” false statement, meaning one affecting a government decision. The decision facing the F.B.I. was whether to open an investigation about the concerns he relayed at that meeting, and it would have done so regardless, they said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6742917895317078}
Mr. Durham has said Mr. Sussmann’s supposed lie was material because had the F.B.I. known that he was acting “as a paid advocate for clients with a political or business agenda,” agents might have asked more questions or taken additional steps before opening an investigation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5672380328178406}

WASHINGTON — John H. Durham, the Trump-era special counsel scrutinizing the investigation into Russia’s 2016 election interference, distanced himself on Thursday from false reports by right-wing news outlets that a motion he recently filed said Hillary Clinton’s campaign had paid to spy on Trump White House servers. Citing a barrage of such reports on Fox News and elsewhere based on the prosecutor’s Feb. 11 filing, defense lawyers for a Democratic-linked cybersecurity lawyer, Michael Sussmann, have accused the special counsel of including unnecessary and misleading information in filings “plainly intended to politicize this case, inflame media coverage and taint the jury pool.” In a filing on Thursday, Mr. Durham defended himself, saying those accusations about his intentions were “simply not true.” He said he had “valid and straightforward reasons” for including the information in the Feb. 11 filing that set off the firestorm, while disavowing responsibility for how certain news outlets had interpreted and portrayed it. Evidence “If third parties or members of the media have overstated, understated or otherwise misinterpreted facts contained in the government’s motion, that does not in any way undermine the valid reasons for the government’s inclusion of this information,” he wrote. Claim But even as he did not acknowledge any problem with how he couched his filing last week, Mr. Durham said he would make future filings under seal if they contained “information that legitimately gives rise to privacy issues or other concerns that might overcome the presumption of public access to judicial documents.” Rebuttal Former President Donald J. Trump has seized on the inaccurate reporting to declare that there is now “indisputable evidence” of a Clinton campaign conspiracy against him — and to suggest that there ought to be executions. Mr. Trump, Fox News hosts and others have also criticized mainstream journalists for not covering the purported revelation. The dispute traces back to a pretrial motion in the case Mr. Durham has brought against Mr. Sussmann accusing him of making a false statement during a September 2016 meeting with the F.B.I. where he relayed concerns about possible cyberlinks between Mr. Trump and Russia. The bureau later dismissed those as unfounded. Mr. Durham says Mr. Sussmann falsely told the F.B.I. official he had no clients, but was really there on behalf of both the Clinton campaign and a technology executive named Rodney Joffe. Mr. Sussmann denies ever saying that, while maintaining he was only there on behalf of Mr. Joffe — not the campaign. Several sentences of the filing recounted a second meeting, in February 2017, where Mr. Sussmann had presented different concerns about odd internet data and Russia to the C.I.A., which came from the same cybersecurity researchers who developed the suspicions he had presented to the F.B.I. At the C.I.A. meeting, Mr. Sussmann shared concerns about data that suggested that someone using a Russian-made smartphone may have been connecting to networks at Trump Tower and the White House, among other places. Mr. Sussmann had obtained that information from Mr. Joffe. The court filing also stated that Mr. Joffe’s company, Neustar, had helped maintain internet-related servers for the White House, and accused Mr. Joffe — whom Mr. Durham has not charged with any crime — and his associates of having “exploited this arrangement” by mining certain records to gather derogatory information about Mr. Trump. In the fall, The New York Times had reported on Mr. Sussmann’s C.I.A. meeting and the concerns he had relayed about the data suggesting the presence of Russian-made YotaPhones — smartphones that are rarely seen in the United States — in proximity to Mr. Trump and in the White House. Evidence But over the weekend, the conservative news media treated those sentences in Mr. Durham’s filing as a new revelation while significantly embellishing what it had said. Mr. Durham, some outlets inaccurately reported, had said he had discovered that the Clinton campaign had paid Mr. Joffe’s company to spy on Mr. Trump. But the campaign had not paid his company, and the filing did not say so. Some outlets also quoted Mr. Durham’s filing as using the word “infiltrate,” a word it did not contain. Rebuttal Most important, the coverage about purported spying on the Trump White House was premised on the idea that the White House network data involved came from when Mr. Trump was president. But Mr. Durham’s filing did not say when it was from. Lawyers for a Georgia Institute of Technology data scientist who helped analyze the Yota data said on Monday that the data came from the Obama presidency. Mr. Sussmann’s lawyers said the same in a filing on Monday night complaining about Mr. Durham’s conduct. Mr. Durham did not directly address that basic factual dispute. But his explanation for why he included the information about the matter in the earlier filing implicitly confirmed that Mr. Sussmann had conveyed concerns about White House data that came from before Mr. Trump was president. The purpose of the earlier filing was to ask a judge to look at potential conflicts of interest on Mr. Sussmann’s legal team. Mr. Durham included those paragraphs, he wrote, in part because one of the potential conflicts was that a member of the defense had worked for the White House “during relevant events that involved” the White House. Evidence The defense lawyer in question is Michael Bosworth, who was a deputy White House counsel in the Obama administration. Claim Separately on Thursday, lawyers for Mr. Sussmann filed a pretrial motion asking a judge to dismiss the case. They argued that even if Mr. Sussmann did falsely say at the F.B.I. meeting that he had no client — which they deny — that would not rise to a “material” false statement, meaning one affecting a government decision. The decision facing the F.B.I. was whether to open an investigation about the concerns he relayed at that meeting, and it would have done so regardless, they said. Mr. Durham has said Mr. Sussmann’s supposed lie was material because had the F.B.I. known that he was acting “as a paid advocate for clients with a political or business agenda,” agents might have asked more questions or taken additional steps before opening an investigation. Evidence

nytimes\eileen-gu-chinese-american.txt

Using custom data configuration default-ed0f0ffc361318cc

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-ed0f0ffc361318cc\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-ed0f0ffc361318cc\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

When it comes to Eileen Gu, the 18-year-old Olympic gold medalist freestyle skier who was born in San Francisco but competed for China, Chinese Americans have lots of opinions. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5170131921768188}
There are those who love her, moved by her ability to soar over treacherous slopes with ease. Others are inspired by her efforts to navigate the uneasy political tension between two countries and cultures. Some believe she chose to represent China simply to cash in on the lucrative opportunities it has afforded her. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7538778185844421}
But like her or not, many Chinese Americans interviewed in the New York region this week agreed on one thing: When Ms. Gu says, as she often does, “When I’m in the U.S., I’m American, but when I’m in China, I’m Chinese,” it resonates with them. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.5491899847984314}
“I think what I’m seeing is somebody who isn’t afraid to love her identities and share that with people,” said Sarah Belle Lin, 28, a Harlem resident. “I think it’s so brave, actually, for her to speak about that on a public platform.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6560439467430115}
To Ms. Lin and more than two dozen other Chinese Americans interviewed in the New York metro area, home to the country’s largest Chinese American population as of 2019, Ms. Gu’s statement expresses a duality that resembles their lived experiences. And they find that duality comfortable, they said, not counterintuitive. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.924125611782074}
For that reason, many expressed dismay about social media users and conservative pundits calling Ms. Gu a “traitor” and “ungrateful,” painting her as somehow not quite an American because she had chosen to compete for China, and suggesting that her identity must fall into a binary — Chinese or American, but not both. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8540104031562805}
Ms. Gu has repeatedly stated that she made her choice because she wanted to serve as a role model for female athletes in China, and raise the profile of skiing in a country where it is still largely a nascent sport. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.43560248613357544}
Some of those interviewed said they viewed the questioning of her loyalty as a troubling reminder of ongoing Orientalist stereotypes of Asian Americans as “perpetual foreigners” with the potential to undermine the United States, even though many of them call the country their home. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.58852618932724}
“I think, if political tensions continue to rise, we will find ourselves in situations, whether we’re in the States or in China, where people will push us to identify with one over the other,” said Easten Law, 38, of Princeton, N.J. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5413312315940857}
“For us everyday Chinese Americans, we’re going to have to deal with the same issues of, you know, claiming versus disassociating, and parsing through what to identify with and what not to,” he said. “I think it’s inevitable.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5201840400695801}
For others, the criticism against Ms. Gu felt personal. Several described experiencing the weight of people’s narrow expectations of how Asian Americans should act, think and identify. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.6586483120918274}
Jessica Wu, a Queens resident, never felt this projection more clearly than in 2017, when she flew from Portugal to Philadelphia. While passing through immigration with others from her flight, Ms. Wu said, a Transportation Security Administration agent laughed when he saw her United States passport and asked if she was actually an American citizen. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.981427788734436}
“Even though I never felt like I have to choose or even think about my identity, I think other people make that assumption for me, or they put their own racist assumptions on me,” said Ms. Wu. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4905070960521698}
Though Ms. Gu, who was born to a Chinese mother and an American father, has described herself as a typical Asian American teen, she had an unusually privileged childhood. She was raised in an affluent neighborhood of San Francisco, attended an elite private school and spent most summers in Beijing. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8157424926757812}
Her experience since then has been similarly uncommon. She has been allowed to compete with an ambiguous citizenship status: China does not allow dual citizenship, but there is no record of Ms. Gu having renounced her American citizenship. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8627811670303345}
And then there’s the fact that she has been able to tap into a vast pool of sponsorships, in part because competitive skiing is still a growing field in China. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6484823226928711}
She has contracts with more than 30 international brands, according to The Wall Street Journal, including Tiffany & Company and Louis Vuitton, and her rising modeling career has put her on the covers of the Chinese editions of Vogue and Marie Claire. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8768788576126099}
Lai Ling Li, 38, who said she was a fan of Ms. Gu, said she thought China’s audience of 1.4 billion people likely drove the athlete’s decision. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7725442051887512}
“It really comes down to opportunity,” said Ms. Li, noting Ms. Gu’s impressive sponsorship roster. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.47201913595199585}
“I don’t know any other athlete who’s able to do that, especially at 18 years old,” she added. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4346006214618683}
Whether or not Ms. Gu was motivated by identity or national preference, her story is one that is now inextricably tangled up in both. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5834369659423828}
The relationship between China and the United States has reached a new low in recent years as China’s economic and military global power has grown. The tension was compounded by former President Donald J. Trump’s punitive trade policies and explicit anti-Chinese statements at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. As assaults against Asian Americans spiked across the country over the last two years, many attackers parroted the former president’s rhetoric. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.965286374092102}
Under the shadow of today’s antagonism, Ms. Gu has had to field countless questions about everything from whether she intends to renounce her American citizenship to her thoughts on China’s censorship policies and the sexual assault allegations made by Peng Shuai, one of the country’s star tennis players, against a senior government official. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4734635353088379}
Ms. Gu has stressed repeatedly that she wants to avoid discussing politics when it comes to China, telling The New York Times in a previous interview that she did not want to be “divisive” and that her mission is “all about inclusivity.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5284647941589355}
In New York, many of those interviewed said her decision to compete for China should not be conflated with a political preference, arguing that it was unfair to expect someone’s identity to represent a country or its political climate. (Others noted that she was just 15 when she made the choice.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5968687534332275}
“To be Chinese doesn’t mean that you are always in support of China’s government,” said Lucy Yu, 27, who recently opened Yu and Me Books, a bookstore in Manhattan’s Chinatown. “I can respect that and also understand the difficulties that come with expressing that.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9050637483596802}
Some said they were confused as to why Ms. Gu had chosen to compete for a country facing widespread allegations of human rights abuses, such as accusations of carrying out a genocide against Uyghurs and other Muslim residents, and a history of suppressing those who have attempted to sound the alarm over social unrest or government wrongdoing. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.8099378943443298}
Others said that although they did not believe Ms. Gu was obligated to speak up on issues affecting Chinese people, they did not understand why she had chosen to stay tight-lipped on matters in China while making her position clear on issues relevant to Americans, such as the rise in anti-Asian attacks and the Black Lives Matter movement. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.8758825063705444}
Ricky Yeh, 37, said as a Taiwanese American, he was troubled by Ms. Gu’s choice. Beijing considers the island part of China and has long demanded unification, but an increasing number of Taiwanese people have distanced themselves from mainland culture. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9574860334396362}
“If you are a supporter of human rights, according to her public speech, then why do you support that kind of country?” Mr. Yeh said. “Maybe that’s not her priority. But in recent days, every country has recognized that China has been harming human rights in every way they can.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6187537908554077}
And some, such as Ming Xia, a professor of political science at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, feared that the longer Ms. Gu competes for China, the more vulnerable she may become to any of the country’s attempts to exploit her image for political propaganda. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.529441773891449}
“She was recruited to compete on behalf of China, but she was not recruited to become the spokesperson for China’s toxic patriotism,” said Dr. Xia. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7493861317634583}
Perhaps at the heart of the controversy is the question of what it means to be Asian American, and how that evolving description stretches and bends for each person. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5252364277839661}
Ms. Lin, the Harlem resident, plans to live in Hong Kong or Shanghai for a few years. She said that wherever she ends up moving, she would be just as American there as she is Asian while living in the United States. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9119189977645874}
The idea that someone would feel justified in questioning her identity or even her political loyalty over this choice, she said, angered her. And although members of the public may have already made up their minds about who Ms. Gu is and what she stands for, she said, only the athlete herself will know the answer. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8711144924163818}
“I’m Asian American, now and forever,” Ms. Lin said. “And I feel like the same goes for anybody who wants to say the same.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5212600827217102}

When it comes to Eileen Gu, the 18-year-old Olympic gold medalist freestyle skier who was born in San Francisco but competed for China, Chinese Americans have lots of opinions. Claim There are those who love her, moved by her ability to soar over treacherous slopes with ease. Others are inspired by her efforts to navigate the uneasy political tension between two countries and cultures. Some believe she chose to represent China simply to cash in on the lucrative opportunities it has afforded her. Evidence But like her or not, many Chinese Americans interviewed in the New York region this week agreed on one thing: When Ms. Gu says, as she often does, “When I’m in the U.S., I’m American, but when I’m in China, I’m Chinese,” it resonates with them. Rebuttal “I think what I’m seeing is somebody who isn’t afraid to love her identities and share that with people,” said Sarah Belle Lin, 28, a Harlem resident. “I think it’s so brave, actually, for her to speak about that on a public platform.” To Ms. Lin and more than two dozen other Chinese Americans interviewed in the New York metro area, home to the country’s largest Chinese American population as of 2019, Ms. Gu’s statement expresses a duality that resembles their lived experiences. And they find that duality comfortable, they said, not counterintuitive. For that reason, many expressed dismay about social media users and conservative pundits calling Ms. Gu a “traitor” and “ungrateful,” painting her as somehow not quite an American because she had chosen to compete for China, and suggesting that her identity must fall into a binary — Chinese or American, but not both. Ms. Gu has repeatedly stated that she made her choice because she wanted to serve as a role model for female athletes in China, and raise the profile of skiing in a country where it is still largely a nascent sport. Evidence Some of those interviewed said they viewed the questioning of her loyalty as a troubling reminder of ongoing Orientalist stereotypes of Asian Americans as “perpetual foreigners” with the potential to undermine the United States, even though many of them call the country their home. Counterclaim “I think, if political tensions continue to rise, we will find ourselves in situations, whether we’re in the States or in China, where people will push us to identify with one over the other,” said Easten Law, 38, of Princeton, N.J. “For us everyday Chinese Americans, we’re going to have to deal with the same issues of, you know, claiming versus disassociating, and parsing through what to identify with and what not to,” he said. “I think it’s inevitable.” Evidence For others, the criticism against Ms. Gu felt personal. Several described experiencing the weight of people’s narrow expectations of how Asian Americans should act, think and identify. Counterclaim Jessica Wu, a Queens resident, never felt this projection more clearly than in 2017, when she flew from Portugal to Philadelphia. While passing through immigration with others from her flight, Ms. Wu said, a Transportation Security Administration agent laughed when he saw her United States passport and asked if she was actually an American citizen. “Even though I never felt like I have to choose or even think about my identity, I think other people make that assumption for me, or they put their own racist assumptions on me,” said Ms. Wu. Though Ms. Gu, who was born to a Chinese mother and an American father, has described herself as a typical Asian American teen, she had an unusually privileged childhood. She was raised in an affluent neighborhood of San Francisco, attended an elite private school and spent most summers in Beijing. Her experience since then has been similarly uncommon. She has been allowed to compete with an ambiguous citizenship status: China does not allow dual citizenship, but there is no record of Ms. Gu having renounced her American citizenship. Evidence And then there’s the fact that she has been able to tap into a vast pool of sponsorships, in part because competitive skiing is still a growing field in China. Claim She has contracts with more than 30 international brands, according to The Wall Street Journal, including Tiffany & Company and Louis Vuitton, and her rising modeling career has put her on the covers of the Chinese editions of Vogue and Marie Claire. Lai Ling Li, 38, who said she was a fan of Ms. Gu, said she thought China’s audience of 1.4 billion people likely drove the athlete’s decision. Evidence “It really comes down to opportunity,” said Ms. Li, noting Ms. Gu’s impressive sponsorship roster. “I don’t know any other athlete who’s able to do that, especially at 18 years old,” she added. Whether or not Ms. Gu was motivated by identity or national preference, her story is one that is now inextricably tangled up in both. Claim The relationship between China and the United States has reached a new low in recent years as China’s economic and military global power has grown. The tension was compounded by former President Donald J. Trump’s punitive trade policies and explicit anti-Chinese statements at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. As assaults against Asian Americans spiked across the country over the last two years, many attackers parroted the former president’s rhetoric. Under the shadow of today’s antagonism, Ms. Gu has had to field countless questions about everything from whether she intends to renounce her American citizenship to her thoughts on China’s censorship policies and the sexual assault allegations made by Peng Shuai, one of the country’s star tennis players, against a senior government official. Ms. Gu has stressed repeatedly that she wants to avoid discussing politics when it comes to China, telling The New York Times in a previous interview that she did not want to be “divisive” and that her mission is “all about inclusivity.” In New York, many of those interviewed said her decision to compete for China should not be conflated with a political preference, arguing that it was unfair to expect someone’s identity to represent a country or its political climate. (Others noted that she was just 15 when she made the choice.) “To be Chinese doesn’t mean that you are always in support of China’s government,” said Lucy Yu, 27, who recently opened Yu and Me Books, a bookstore in Manhattan’s Chinatown. “I can respect that and also understand the difficulties that come with expressing that.” Evidence Some said they were confused as to why Ms. Gu had chosen to compete for a country facing widespread allegations of human rights abuses, such as accusations of carrying out a genocide against Uyghurs and other Muslim residents, and a history of suppressing those who have attempted to sound the alarm over social unrest or government wrongdoing. Others said that although they did not believe Ms. Gu was obligated to speak up on issues affecting Chinese people, they did not understand why she had chosen to stay tight-lipped on matters in China while making her position clear on issues relevant to Americans, such as the rise in anti-Asian attacks and the Black Lives Matter movement. Counterclaim Ricky Yeh, 37, said as a Taiwanese American, he was troubled by Ms. Gu’s choice. Beijing considers the island part of China and has long demanded unification, but an increasing number of Taiwanese people have distanced themselves from mainland culture. “If you are a supporter of human rights, according to her public speech, then why do you support that kind of country?” Mr. Yeh said. “Maybe that’s not her priority. But in recent days, every country has recognized that China has been harming human rights in every way they can.” And some, such as Ming Xia, a professor of political science at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, feared that the longer Ms. Gu competes for China, the more vulnerable she may become to any of the country’s attempts to exploit her image for political propaganda. “She was recruited to compete on behalf of China, but she was not recruited to become the spokesperson for China’s toxic patriotism,” said Dr. Xia. Evidence Perhaps at the heart of the controversy is the question of what it means to be Asian American, and how that evolving description stretches and bends for each person. Claim Ms. Lin, the Harlem resident, plans to live in Hong Kong or Shanghai for a few years. She said that wherever she ends up moving, she would be just as American there as she is Asian while living in the United States. The idea that someone would feel justified in questioning her identity or even her political loyalty over this choice, she said, angered her. And although members of the public may have already made up their minds about who Ms. Gu is and what she stands for, she said, only the athlete herself will know the answer. “I’m Asian American, now and forever,” Ms. Lin said. “And I feel like the same goes for anybody who wants to say the same.” Evidence

nytimes\energy-savings-nest.txt

Using custom data configuration default-8e9a77c5c5c37e7c

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-8e9a77c5c5c37e7c\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-8e9a77c5c5c37e7c\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5785791277885437}
The cost of just about everything has gone up. But nothing has been more ulcer-inducing than the skyrocketing price of a basic need: energy. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.38837891817092896}
The price increases stem in large part from the pandemic’s many disruptions. Pacific Gas & Electric, the largest power provider in California, recently said natural gas prices this winter had jumped 90 percent from a year earlier because of stifled production worldwide. Electricity prices in January climbed 11 percent from last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.991795003414154}
On social media apps like Nextdoor and Twitter, thousands of people have complained throughout the winter about their soaring gas and electricity bills, some of which have quadrupled to $900 a month. That’s the equivalent of buying a fancy new smartphone every month. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.953158438205719}
So this winter, I embarked on a test of energy-saving tech. In January 2021, my energy bill peaked at $370. I wanted to see if I could do better. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8818670511245728}
For my experiment, I adjusted my Nest smart thermostat to control my heat and lower my gas expenses. For electricity, I experimented with internet-connected plugs that could be programmed to turn off appliances and devices at certain hours to avoid wasting energy. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9667800068855286}
The great news: My winter energy bills dropped to an average of about $250 a month from an average of $310. The bad news: An energy-efficiency expert paid a visit and, while concluding that the bill could drop by 1.5 times more, said there was a lot to do for my home that gadgets would not solve. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9927155375480652}
“Tech is helpful for sure, but most likely won’t take a huge bite out of bills,” said the expert, Mickey Souza, the owner of Energineers, a home energy auditing firm in the San Francisco Bay Area. She added that the main culprit of a home’s high energy costs was usually improper insulation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.897185206413269}
Here are the three main lessons I learned. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8281054496765137}
There is no one-size-fits-all advice for saving energy. I learned this in December 2020 when I first started using Google’s Nest thermostat, which can create a heating and cooling schedule based on your usage habits throughout the day. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7946016192436218}
The Department of Energy and utilities like PG&E and Consolidated Edison recommended setting the thermostat at 68 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter. So I programmed the Nest for 68 throughout the day. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9033137559890747}
When the $370 bill arrived a month later, I realized that the rule of thumb was terrible for my two-bedroom home, which was built in the 1960s with insulation treated as an afterthought. Once the house reached 68 degrees, it couldn’t retain that temperature for long, so the furnace powered back on about 20 minutes later. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9251251816749573}
This is all to say that saving energy with tech requires some independent thinking. While leaving the thermostat at 68 all day may make sense for small apartments in well-insulated buildings, this is generic advice that many homes probably wouldn’t benefit from, said Ben Brown, Google’s product manager for the Nest thermostat. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8142971396446228}
Instead, ask yourself some questions. What is the size of your home? What do you know about the insulation? How long does it take to heat up a few degrees? And most important, at what temperature would you and your family feel comfortable? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8314753174781799}
In November, I decided to try to make the Nest work better with my home this winter. After tinkering with the Nest’s settings and studying my energy costs every day for a month, I concluded that this was the best schedule for my house: {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3328930139541626}
6:30 a.m.: Raise the temperature to 66, for when it’s time to get out of bed. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.681007981300354}
8 a.m.: Set the temperature to 60 so that the temperature steadily drops throughout the day. This made the house a bit chilly but tolerable wearing a sweater. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9431765079498291}
8 p.m.: Raise the temperature to 66, for when it gets cold at night (and after PG&E’s peak-pricing period). {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8629898428916931}
11 p.m.: Set the temperature to 57, for bedtime. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6615605354309082}
During this experiment, the Nest thermostat also gave me a “heads-up” warning that my furnace was turning on and off every few minutes, which meant something was wrong. I hired an HVAC professional who diagnosed and fixed the problem: The gas pressure was too high, causing the furnace to overheat and shut down automatically. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9649515151977539}
This solution, combined with the programmed heating schedule, led to a significant drop in my bills. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6916829943656921}
In December, after finishing my experiment with gas, I turned my attention to electricity. The results were less remarkable. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5997844934463501}
I tested smart plugs from TP-Link, which offers a smartphone app to program the light switches and devices to turn on and off on a schedule. I also plugged in devices that were frequent offenders of so-called vampire energy, which suck power even when not in use. They included a large speaker, a laptop charger and a phone charger, for which I programmed the plugs to stay on only when I was likely to use them. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9907536506652832}
Over a few weeks, I studied my bills. The differences in energy costs were marginal. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4717020094394684}
That’s not to say we shouldn’t try to avoid wasting small amounts of power. But if your goal is to cut down on your bill, look elsewhere. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.40839260816574097}
After the tests, I brought in Ms. Souza of Energineers, who toured my home for two hours and delivered the unfortunate news: There were major issues with my home’s “shell” — that is, the roof and walls. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6520587205886841}
“The shell naturally is the most important piece of efficiency,” she said. “Just like the shell on a turtle, it’s going to keep whatever’s out there that you don’t want from coming into your home.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5015313625335693}
Using an infrared camera, Ms. Souza showed that my roof lacked adequate insulation and that the walls had none at all. She also found that some ducts lacked insulation. There were also holes throughout the home where air was leaking out of the house. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9811012744903564}
Ms. Souza estimated that hiring a contractor to seal leaks and install proper insulation would cost $7,000 to $10,000. I would qualify for roughly $2,000 in rebates, but ouch. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9513557553291321}
If I did the work, Ms. Souza said, my average winter bill would most likely drop to about $165 a month, from $250. More important, my wife, our dogs and I would live more comfortably. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9213835000991821}
In the end, tech options like smart thermostats are important and must-have products to help us fight surging energy costs. But they are just tools that give us deeper insight into our energy use. The real problem-solvers are still people, like you and your local HVAC professional. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.9474989175796509}
“Technology can significantly help you around your home, but it’s not a substitute for your own smarts,” said Mr. Brown of Google. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4941055476665497}

To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android. The cost of just about everything has gone up. But nothing has been more ulcer-inducing than the skyrocketing price of a basic need: energy. Claim The price increases stem in large part from the pandemic’s many disruptions. Pacific Gas & Electric, the largest power provider in California, recently said natural gas prices this winter had jumped 90 percent from a year earlier because of stifled production worldwide. Electricity prices in January climbed 11 percent from last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. On social media apps like Nextdoor and Twitter, thousands of people have complained throughout the winter about their soaring gas and electricity bills, some of which have quadrupled to $900 a month. That’s the equivalent of buying a fancy new smartphone every month. So this winter, I embarked on a test of energy-saving tech. In January 2021, my energy bill peaked at $370. I wanted to see if I could do better. For my experiment, I adjusted my Nest smart thermostat to control my heat and lower my gas expenses. For electricity, I experimented with internet-connected plugs that could be programmed to turn off appliances and devices at certain hours to avoid wasting energy. The great news: My winter energy bills dropped to an average of about $250 a month from an average of $310. The bad news: An energy-efficiency expert paid a visit and, while concluding that the bill could drop by 1.5 times more, said there was a lot to do for my home that gadgets would not solve. “Tech is helpful for sure, but most likely won’t take a huge bite out of bills,” said the expert, Mickey Souza, the owner of Energineers, a home energy auditing firm in the San Francisco Bay Area. She added that the main culprit of a home’s high energy costs was usually improper insulation. Evidence Here are the three main lessons I learned. Claim There is no one-size-fits-all advice for saving energy. I learned this in December 2020 when I first started using Google’s Nest thermostat, which can create a heating and cooling schedule based on your usage habits throughout the day. The Department of Energy and utilities like PG&E and Consolidated Edison recommended setting the thermostat at 68 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter. So I programmed the Nest for 68 throughout the day. When the $370 bill arrived a month later, I realized that the rule of thumb was terrible for my two-bedroom home, which was built in the 1960s with insulation treated as an afterthought. Once the house reached 68 degrees, it couldn’t retain that temperature for long, so the furnace powered back on about 20 minutes later. This is all to say that saving energy with tech requires some independent thinking. While leaving the thermostat at 68 all day may make sense for small apartments in well-insulated buildings, this is generic advice that many homes probably wouldn’t benefit from, said Ben Brown, Google’s product manager for the Nest thermostat. Instead, ask yourself some questions. What is the size of your home? What do you know about the insulation? How long does it take to heat up a few degrees? And most important, at what temperature would you and your family feel comfortable? In November, I decided to try to make the Nest work better with my home this winter. After tinkering with the Nest’s settings and studying my energy costs every day for a month, I concluded that this was the best schedule for my house: 6:30 a.m.: Raise the temperature to 66, for when it’s time to get out of bed. 8 a.m.: Set the temperature to 60 so that the temperature steadily drops throughout the day. This made the house a bit chilly but tolerable wearing a sweater. 8 p.m.: Raise the temperature to 66, for when it gets cold at night (and after PG&E’s peak-pricing period). 11 p.m.: Set the temperature to 57, for bedtime. During this experiment, the Nest thermostat also gave me a “heads-up” warning that my furnace was turning on and off every few minutes, which meant something was wrong. I hired an HVAC professional who diagnosed and fixed the problem: The gas pressure was too high, causing the furnace to overheat and shut down automatically. Evidence This solution, combined with the programmed heating schedule, led to a significant drop in my bills. In December, after finishing my experiment with gas, I turned my attention to electricity. The results were less remarkable. Claim I tested smart plugs from TP-Link, which offers a smartphone app to program the light switches and devices to turn on and off on a schedule. I also plugged in devices that were frequent offenders of so-called vampire energy, which suck power even when not in use. They included a large speaker, a laptop charger and a phone charger, for which I programmed the plugs to stay on only when I was likely to use them. Over a few weeks, I studied my bills. The differences in energy costs were marginal. That’s not to say we shouldn’t try to avoid wasting small amounts of power. But if your goal is to cut down on your bill, look elsewhere. After the tests, I brought in Ms. Souza of Energineers, who toured my home for two hours and delivered the unfortunate news: There were major issues with my home’s “shell” — that is, the roof and walls. “The shell naturally is the most important piece of efficiency,” she said. “Just like the shell on a turtle, it’s going to keep whatever’s out there that you don’t want from coming into your home.” Using an infrared camera, Ms. Souza showed that my roof lacked adequate insulation and that the walls had none at all. She also found that some ducts lacked insulation. There were also holes throughout the home where air was leaking out of the house. Ms. Souza estimated that hiring a contractor to seal leaks and install proper insulation would cost $7,000 to $10,000. I would qualify for roughly $2,000 in rebates, but ouch. If I did the work, Ms. Souza said, my average winter bill would most likely drop to about $165 a month, from $250. More important, my wife, our dogs and I would live more comfortably. Evidence In the end, tech options like smart thermostats are important and must-have products to help us fight surging energy costs. But they are just tools that give us deeper insight into our energy use. The real problem-solvers are still people, like you and your local HVAC professional. Concluding Statement “Technology can significantly help you around your home, but it’s not a substitute for your own smarts,” said Mr. Brown of Google. Claim

nytimes\eunice-storm-damage.txt

Using custom data configuration default-d4a9503f2d6bce6d

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-d4a9503f2d6bce6d\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-d4a9503f2d6bce6d\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

LONDON — Strong winds battered parts of Britain and Northern Europe on Friday, as a severe storm led to the deaths of at least seven people in the region, damaged buildings and severely disrupted travel by air, land and sea. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9362918734550476}
The storm, called Eunice, tore into roofs, flung debris through streets, wobbled planes in the skies and led the British authorities to issue a rare weather safety warning for London. Britain’s national weather service, the Meteorological Office, said a wind gust of 122 miles per hour was recorded on the Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England, which if confirmed would be the country’s highest ever. Severe weather warnings were also issued in Belgium and the Netherlands. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.994831919670105}
Richard Miles, a spokesman for the Met Office, said the storm was going to be more significant than any since one in January 1990 that killed dozens of people in England. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6608510613441467}
The winds led to the deaths on Friday of at least six people who were killed by falling trees. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5874496102333069}
A cyclist and one other person were struck and killed by trees in Amsterdam, the Amsterdam-Amstelland Fire Brigade said in a statement. A person in the town of Diemen was killed inside a car after it was hit by a tree, the Fire Brigade said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9864094257354736}
A man in his 60s was struck and killed by a falling tree in southeast Ireland, the country’s police service said in a statement. The man, an employee of the Wexford County Council, was helping to clear debris from the storm. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9356848001480103}
A woman in her 30s died in London after a tree fell on the car she was in, the Metropolitan Police Service said in a statement. And a sixth person, a man in his 50s, was killed when debris struck the windscreen of a vehicle in Netherton, England, the Merseyside police said in a statement. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9879015684127808}
A 79-year-old British man died after he fell from his boat at a marina on a waterway in the northern town of Ypres, Belgium, after strong winds knocked him into the water, Reuters reported. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8204755783081055}
The high winds from the storm also sent a crane crashing into the roof of a hospital in the town of Tournai, west of Brussels. No injuries were reported. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9450806975364685}
The London Fire Brigade said it had received more emergency calls over a two-and-a-half-hour period on Friday than it normally received in a day.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5421105623245239}
About 1,000 people were evacuated from the O2 Arena in London, one of Britain’s largest concert venues, after part of the building’s roof was shredded by the wind. There were no reports of injuries or structural damage to the arena, the London Fire Brigade said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9698096513748169}
More than 200 flights were canceled at airports across Northern Europe, with most of the cancellations at Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport, according to FlightAware, a flight-tracking website. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6747497916221619}
A livestream of jets trying to land at Heathrow Airport in London was being watched by more than 200,000 people at one point. The video, on a YouTube channel for aviation enthusiasts, was hosted by Jerry Dyer, who provided colorful commentary with each landing. As one plane tilted and drifted toward the tarmac, Mr. Dyer said “easy son, easy, easy” before a successful landing, earning a “nicely done” from Mr. Dyer. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8788239359855652}
Train service in parts of Britain was also disrupted, with Wales canceling all service for the day because of the weather. Network Rail, which owns and operates Britain’s rail infrastructure, urged people not to travel “unless absolutely necessary” and suspended some service in southern England on Friday afternoon because of debris blocking the tracks, including fallen trees, a trampoline and the roof of a building. Service was also suspended into and out of major train stations in London, including Waterloo and Euston. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9916861653327942}
The Port of Dover in southeastern England was temporarily closed to shipping on Friday afternoon. Ferry services were also suspended between Dover and Calais, France, and canceled in the north of England between Newcastle and Amsterdam. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9864369034767151}
Scores of schools districts along the southern and western coasts of Britain were closed Friday, and attractions in and around London, including the London Eye, were also forced to close because of dangerous winds. Plans for Prince Charles to visit Newport and Swansea, on the south coast of Wales, were also canceled Friday in the “interest of public safety.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9857902526855469}
A wider swath of the United Kingdom was under an amber warning, indicating a high risk for power outages, damage to buildings and uprooted trees, the Met Office said. Windy conditions could also scatter debris along beaches. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9811325669288635}
The northern edge of the storm was expected to bring the risk of snow to parts of Britain, and some areas could see blizzard conditions. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7352458238601685}
In the Netherlands, rail service was temporarily suspended and professional soccer games on Friday were postponed. In Belgium, some schools closed early because of the storm. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9730397462844849}
The storm was expected to clear out by the end of the day, Mr. Miles said, but conditions will remain windy over the weekend. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6250622272491455}
Eunice comes just after another storm, Dudley, knocked out power across parts of Britain and Northern Europe and sent waves crashing through a ferry in Hamburg, Germany, causing damage. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8956682682037354}

LONDON — Strong winds battered parts of Britain and Northern Europe on Friday, as a severe storm led to the deaths of at least seven people in the region, damaged buildings and severely disrupted travel by air, land and sea. The storm, called Eunice, tore into roofs, flung debris through streets, wobbled planes in the skies and led the British authorities to issue a rare weather safety warning for London. Britain’s national weather service, the Meteorological Office, said a wind gust of 122 miles per hour was recorded on the Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England, which if confirmed would be the country’s highest ever. Severe weather warnings were also issued in Belgium and the Netherlands. Richard Miles, a spokesman for the Met Office, said the storm was going to be more significant than any since one in January 1990 that killed dozens of people in England. The winds led to the deaths on Friday of at least six people who were killed by falling trees. A cyclist and one other person were struck and killed by trees in Amsterdam, the Amsterdam-Amstelland Fire Brigade said in a statement. A person in the town of Diemen was killed inside a car after it was hit by a tree, the Fire Brigade said. A man in his 60s was struck and killed by a falling tree in southeast Ireland, the country’s police service said in a statement. The man, an employee of the Wexford County Council, was helping to clear debris from the storm. A woman in her 30s died in London after a tree fell on the car she was in, the Metropolitan Police Service said in a statement. And a sixth person, a man in his 50s, was killed when debris struck the windscreen of a vehicle in Netherton, England, the Merseyside police said in a statement. A 79-year-old British man died after he fell from his boat at a marina on a waterway in the northern town of Ypres, Belgium, after strong winds knocked him into the water, Reuters reported. The high winds from the storm also sent a crane crashing into the roof of a hospital in the town of Tournai, west of Brussels. No injuries were reported. The London Fire Brigade said it had received more emergency calls over a two-and-a-half-hour period on Friday than it normally received in a day. About 1,000 people were evacuated from the O2 Arena in London, one of Britain’s largest concert venues, after part of the building’s roof was shredded by the wind. There were no reports of injuries or structural damage to the arena, the London Fire Brigade said. More than 200 flights were canceled at airports across Northern Europe, with most of the cancellations at Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport, according to FlightAware, a flight-tracking website. A livestream of jets trying to land at Heathrow Airport in London was being watched by more than 200,000 people at one point. The video, on a YouTube channel for aviation enthusiasts, was hosted by Jerry Dyer, who provided colorful commentary with each landing. As one plane tilted and drifted toward the tarmac, Mr. Dyer said “easy son, easy, easy” before a successful landing, earning a “nicely done” from Mr. Dyer. Train service in parts of Britain was also disrupted, with Wales canceling all service for the day because of the weather. Network Rail, which owns and operates Britain’s rail infrastructure, urged people not to travel “unless absolutely necessary” and suspended some service in southern England on Friday afternoon because of debris blocking the tracks, including fallen trees, a trampoline and the roof of a building. Service was also suspended into and out of major train stations in London, including Waterloo and Euston. The Port of Dover in southeastern England was temporarily closed to shipping on Friday afternoon. Ferry services were also suspended between Dover and Calais, France, and canceled in the north of England between Newcastle and Amsterdam. Scores of schools districts along the southern and western coasts of Britain were closed Friday, and attractions in and around London, including the London Eye, were also forced to close because of dangerous winds. Plans for Prince Charles to visit Newport and Swansea, on the south coast of Wales, were also canceled Friday in the “interest of public safety.” A wider swath of the United Kingdom was under an amber warning, indicating a high risk for power outages, damage to buildings and uprooted trees, the Met Office said. Windy conditions could also scatter debris along beaches. The northern edge of the storm was expected to bring the risk of snow to parts of Britain, and some areas could see blizzard conditions. In the Netherlands, rail service was temporarily suspended and professional soccer games on Friday were postponed. In Belgium, some schools closed early because of the storm. The storm was expected to clear out by the end of the day, Mr. Miles said, but conditions will remain windy over the weekend. Eunice comes just after another storm, Dudley, knocked out power across parts of Britain and Northern Europe and sent waves crashing through a ferry in Hamburg, Germany, causing damage. Evidence

nytimes\ezra-klein-podcast-alex-tabarrok.txt

Using custom data configuration default-70ff68c06233a4fe

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-70ff68c06233a4fe\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-70ff68c06233a4fe\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Government is a bureaucratic, slow-moving institution. It’s too easily captured by special interests. It’s often incapable of acting at the speed and scale our problems demand. And when it does act, it can make things worse. Look no further than the Food and Drug Administration’s slowness to approve rapid coronavirus tests or major cities’ inability to build new housing and public transit or Congress’s failure to pass basic voting rights legislation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7441567778587341}
This criticism is typically weaponized as an argument for shrinking government and outsourcing its responsibilities to the market. But the past two years have revealed the hollowness of that approach. A pandemic is a problem the private sector simply cannot solve. The same is true for other major challenges of the 21st century, such as climate change and technology-driven inequality. Ours is an age in which government needs to be able to do big things, solve big problems and deliver where the market cannot or will not. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.5657234787940979}
[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.] {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6073585152626038}
Alex Tabarrok is an economist at George Mason University, a blogger at Marginal Revolution and for years has been one of the sharpest libertarian critics of big government. But the experience of the pandemic has changed his thinking in key ways. “Ninety-nine years out of 100, I’m a libertarian,” he told me last year. “But then there’s that one year out of 100.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5010251402854919}
So this conversation is about the central tension that Tabarrok and I are grappling with right now: Government failure has never been more apparent — and yet we need government more than ever. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.572478711605072}
We discuss (and debate) the public choice theory of government failure, why it’s so damn hard to build things in America, how reforms intended to weaken special interests often empower them, why the American right is responsible for much of the government dysfunction it criticizes, the case for state capacity libertarianism, the appropriate size of the welfare state, the political importance of massive economic inequality and how the crypto world’s pursuit of decentralization could backfire. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.5550583600997925}
You can listen to our whole conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8217231631278992}
(A full transcript of the episode is available here.) {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6118690967559814}

Government is a bureaucratic, slow-moving institution. It’s too easily captured by special interests. It’s often incapable of acting at the speed and scale our problems demand. And when it does act, it can make things worse. Look no further than the Food and Drug Administration’s slowness to approve rapid coronavirus tests or major cities’ inability to build new housing and public transit or Congress’s failure to pass basic voting rights legislation. Evidence This criticism is typically weaponized as an argument for shrinking government and outsourcing its responsibilities to the market. But the past two years have revealed the hollowness of that approach. A pandemic is a problem the private sector simply cannot solve. The same is true for other major challenges of the 21st century, such as climate change and technology-driven inequality. Ours is an age in which government needs to be able to do big things, solve big problems and deliver where the market cannot or will not. Concluding Statement [You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.] Alex Tabarrok is an economist at George Mason University, a blogger at Marginal Revolution and for years has been one of the sharpest libertarian critics of big government. But the experience of the pandemic has changed his thinking in key ways. “Ninety-nine years out of 100, I’m a libertarian,” he told me last year. “But then there’s that one year out of 100.” Evidence So this conversation is about the central tension that Tabarrok and I are grappling with right now: Government failure has never been more apparent — and yet we need government more than ever. We discuss (and debate) the public choice theory of government failure, why it’s so damn hard to build things in America, how reforms intended to weaken special interests often empower them, why the American right is responsible for much of the government dysfunction it criticizes, the case for state capacity libertarianism, the appropriate size of the welfare state, the political importance of massive economic inequality and how the crypto world’s pursuit of decentralization could backfire. Concluding Statement You can listen to our whole conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here. Evidence (A full transcript of the episode is available here.) Claim

nytimes\facebook-experiments.txt

Using custom data configuration default-e74dc4484e78364f

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-e74dc4484e78364f\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-e74dc4484e78364f\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. Here is a collection of past columns. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.7628713846206665}
Facebook acts like a small child who falls in love with a new Lego set but then grows bored. It is up to users and business partners to pick up the mess. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7583427429199219}
Six years ago, Facebook said its next big thing was robots in its Messenger app that send texts to help people order flowers or figure out which pair of jeans to buy. This idea isn’t a dud, but I’m guessing that a Messenger bot doesn’t pick out your pants. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9178164005279541}
The company also went hot and then cool on a feature that let people broadcast live from their phones, and on a TV-like video hub called Facebook Watch. On Monday, Facebook threw in the towel on its planned digital currency, a project that forced financial and government establishments to respond, but that was half-baked from the start. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9778528809547424}
Experimentation and failure can be healthy. For Facebook and other corporate titans, flops or short-lived whims usually don’t do much harm. (The company has renamed itself Meta, but I’m sticking with Facebook.)  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.728850245475769}
But for the rest of us, Facebook’s stumbles can linger. Ask any business partner that remodeled its customer service teams for Messenger bots, or spent its limited resources making videos for Facebook Watch, only for Facebook’s zeal to fade. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8572258353233337}
This pain might be the inevitable cost of invention. But particularly now — as Facebook bets the company on a more immersive future of the internet, called the metaverse — it’s worth asking what we gain and lose when companies with Facebook’s power and influence persuade the world to follow them to a future that never arrives. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5480521321296692}
In a way, it’s adorable how often Facebook becomes excited about a new idea and then — well, moves on to a different shiny object. Live video and Facebook Watch still exist. They’re just not the high priorities they once were. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9093726277351379}
Other Big Tech companies lose interest in things they once loved. (Heck, we all do this.) But perhaps no other company has the combination of Facebook’s sprawl and its willingness to declare THIS IS GOING TO BE HUGE, persuade people to come along for the ride, and then … shrug. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9003034234046936}
It’s fine, at least for Facebook. But there can be a collective cost when companies and institutions respond to Facebook’s unpromising ideas. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.32988691329956055}
The Federal Reserve doesn’t have infinite time and resources to study what turned out to be the Betamax of cryptocurrency. News organizations, government institutions and most businesses have limited resources — imagine what else they might have done if they hadn’t responded to Facebook’s latest obsession. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8533084988594055}
Even for Facebook, could the staff and energy that it is pouring into the metaverse be better spent doing more to ensure its apps don’t spread election misinformation or allow authoritarian governments to misuse them? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4749142527580261}
I don’t know if there’s a fix for the collateral damage of Facebook’s whims. Maybe for a start, it would be helpful if Facebook presented its new projects as hypotheses to test, rather than firm and permanent declarations of its priorities.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4293142855167389}
Facebook’s fixation on the metaverse is different from its past short-lived projects. For one, Facebook is not alone on the bandwagon trying to pull us toward a more immersive internet that further blurs the lines between digital life and the real thing. And at least for now, this change of direction is a riskier bet for Facebook than for the company’s users or business partners. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8690412044525146}
But I can also understand the inclination for Facebook to believe — even briefly — that it can will its visions into our reality. That is the power of Big Tech. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.47704949975013733}
Technology from Apple and Google effectively dictate how any company reaches potential customers online. When Amazon made fast shipping free, Americans came to expect it from everyone. America’s internet is turning into QVC because tech giants want it that way.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9545862674713135}
We live in Big Tech’s world. Sometimes that brings us handy maps on our phones and online spaces for neighbors to gather. The flip side is that when tech giants like Facebook give up on their dreams, everyone else is left to pick up the pieces.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8558812141418457}
A big month for video game mergers: Sony is spending $3.6 billion to buy Bungie, the company behind the Halo video game franchise. That comes after Microsoft splurged $70 billion to buy Activision, and after Zynga, which makes Words With Friends, was bought for $11 billion.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9881091713905334}
Semi-related? The New York Times is buying Wordle, the online word game that went viral. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.567075788974762}
A lot of business in being a front door to government services: Bloomberg News tells us about ID.me, a company whose software the IRS will begin using for facial recognition scans to prove Americans’ identities. Bloomberg also reports that it looks increasingly likely that ID.me overstated a claim that the company uncovered $400 billion in thefts from state unemployment insurance programs. (A subscription may be required.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9890151619911194}
“Everyone in New York is betting on sports” because a crush of new online wagering sites sprang up after the state legalized the activity, New York magazine’s Intelligencer writes. My colleague Kurt Streeter has a related column about the heartbreak of sports gambling addicts. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9633781909942627}
“It’s like bread and butter, you know? It’s like a Thomas’ English muffin with some jam. Spreads nice.” I wish for more blizzards to hear again from Andy the Massachusetts snow plow driver. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9201346635818481}
We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.39380958676338196}
If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. You can also read past On Tech columns. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.4619752764701843}

This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. Here is a collection of past columns. Lead Facebook acts like a small child who falls in love with a new Lego set but then grows bored. It is up to users and business partners to pick up the mess. Six years ago, Facebook said its next big thing was robots in its Messenger app that send texts to help people order flowers or figure out which pair of jeans to buy. This idea isn’t a dud, but I’m guessing that a Messenger bot doesn’t pick out your pants. The company also went hot and then cool on a feature that let people broadcast live from their phones, and on a TV-like video hub called Facebook Watch. On Monday, Facebook threw in the towel on its planned digital currency, a project that forced financial and government establishments to respond, but that was half-baked from the start. Experimentation and failure can be healthy. For Facebook and other corporate titans, flops or short-lived whims usually don’t do much harm. (The company has renamed itself Meta, but I’m sticking with Facebook.) Evidence But for the rest of us, Facebook’s stumbles can linger. Ask any business partner that remodeled its customer service teams for Messenger bots, or spent its limited resources making videos for Facebook Watch, only for Facebook’s zeal to fade. Rebuttal This pain might be the inevitable cost of invention. But particularly now — as Facebook bets the company on a more immersive future of the internet, called the metaverse — it’s worth asking what we gain and lose when companies with Facebook’s power and influence persuade the world to follow them to a future that never arrives. In a way, it’s adorable how often Facebook becomes excited about a new idea and then — well, moves on to a different shiny object. Live video and Facebook Watch still exist. They’re just not the high priorities they once were. Other Big Tech companies lose interest in things they once loved. (Heck, we all do this.) But perhaps no other company has the combination of Facebook’s sprawl and its willingness to declare THIS IS GOING TO BE HUGE, persuade people to come along for the ride, and then … shrug. Evidence It’s fine, at least for Facebook. But there can be a collective cost when companies and institutions respond to Facebook’s unpromising ideas. Rebuttal The Federal Reserve doesn’t have infinite time and resources to study what turned out to be the Betamax of cryptocurrency. News organizations, government institutions and most businesses have limited resources — imagine what else they might have done if they hadn’t responded to Facebook’s latest obsession. Even for Facebook, could the staff and energy that it is pouring into the metaverse be better spent doing more to ensure its apps don’t spread election misinformation or allow authoritarian governments to misuse them? I don’t know if there’s a fix for the collateral damage of Facebook’s whims. Maybe for a start, it would be helpful if Facebook presented its new projects as hypotheses to test, rather than firm and permanent declarations of its priorities. Facebook’s fixation on the metaverse is different from its past short-lived projects. For one, Facebook is not alone on the bandwagon trying to pull us toward a more immersive internet that further blurs the lines between digital life and the real thing. And at least for now, this change of direction is a riskier bet for Facebook than for the company’s users or business partners. Evidence But I can also understand the inclination for Facebook to believe — even briefly — that it can will its visions into our reality. That is the power of Big Tech. Rebuttal Technology from Apple and Google effectively dictate how any company reaches potential customers online. When Amazon made fast shipping free, Americans came to expect it from everyone. America’s internet is turning into QVC because tech giants want it that way. We live in Big Tech’s world. Sometimes that brings us handy maps on our phones and online spaces for neighbors to gather. The flip side is that when tech giants like Facebook give up on their dreams, everyone else is left to pick up the pieces. A big month for video game mergers: Sony is spending $3.6 billion to buy Bungie, the company behind the Halo video game franchise. That comes after Microsoft splurged $70 billion to buy Activision, and after Zynga, which makes Words With Friends, was bought for $11 billion. Evidence Semi-related? The New York Times is buying Wordle, the online word game that went viral. Claim A lot of business in being a front door to government services: Bloomberg News tells us about ID.me, a company whose software the IRS will begin using for facial recognition scans to prove Americans’ identities. Bloomberg also reports that it looks increasingly likely that ID.me overstated a claim that the company uncovered $400 billion in thefts from state unemployment insurance programs. (A subscription may be required.) “Everyone in New York is betting on sports” because a crush of new online wagering sites sprang up after the state legalized the activity, New York magazine’s Intelligencer writes. My colleague Kurt Streeter has a related column about the heartbreak of sports gambling addicts. “It’s like bread and butter, you know? It’s like a Thomas’ English muffin with some jam. Spreads nice.” I wish for more blizzards to hear again from Andy the Massachusetts snow plow driver. We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. Evidence If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. You can also read past On Tech columns. Concluding Statement

nytimes\fact-check-joe-rogan-robert-malone.txt

Using custom data configuration default-79eb5f72797967b6

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-79eb5f72797967b6\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-79eb5f72797967b6\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5785791277885437}
Spotify has been rocked in recent weeks by the controversy engulfing its most popular podcaster, Joe Rogan. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5587452054023743}
Several prominent musicians and podcasters have left the streaming service to protest what they described as Mr. Rogan’s history of promoting misinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines. There have been calls for boycotts, and Mr. Rogan issued an apology for his past use of a racial slur and took down as many as 70 old episodes of his podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” without explanation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9749962091445923}
The catalyst for much of the controversy was a December episode of his podcast that featured Dr. Robert Malone, a virologist and vaccine skeptic. Hundreds of public health officials and professors, citing the promotion of “several falsehoods about Covid-19 vaccines,” urged the service to crack down on misinformation about the virus. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9545185565948486}
For over three hours, Dr. Malone and Mr. Rogan discussed theories and claims about the coronavirus pandemic and vaccines. The conversation included a false equivalence between the vaccine and Nazi medical experiments, baseless conjecture that President Biden is not actually vaccinated and inaccurate interpretations of government data and guidelines. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9147323369979858}
Here’s a fact check of some of their claims. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.835439145565033}
“Whatever was in those packages was rumored to include ivermectin. But there was a specific visit of Biden to Modi and a decision was made in the Indian government not to disclose the contents of those packages that were being deployed in Uttar Pradesh, which they’re still there, and Uttar Pradesh is flatlined right now.” — Dr. Malone {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9069912433624268}
This is misleading. Dr. Malone’s suggestion that Mr. Biden urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India to conceal the successful use of the drug ivermectin in Uttar Pradesh, the country’s most populous state, does not add up. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.7941315770149231}
It is not exactly a secret that Uttar Pradesh has promoted ivermectin as a prophylactic. The state issued a government notice in August 2020 recommending the prescription of the drug to those who had come into contact with Covid patients, and officials have publicly acknowledged its use throughout the pandemic. Mr. Biden and Mr. Modi met in September, and officials in Uttar Pradesh have continued to publicize the state’s use of ivermectin since, even as India stopped recommending it. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9612184166908264}
Dr. Malone was also wrong that cases in Uttar Pradesh “flatlined” as the world coped with the Omicron variant. Though the case count in the state remained low during the summer and fall, it began to trend upward by late December, when Dr. Malone spoke with Mr. Rogan, and reached more than 11,000 daily cases in mid-January. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.44319379329681396}
Promoters of ivermectin often cite Uttar Pradesh’s low death toll as proof of the drug’s efficacy, but experts say there is no proof of that causal link. It is also worth noting that researchers have questioned the reliability of data from Uttar Pradesh. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8761579394340515}
Mr. Rogan: “But I saw the shot where Joe Biden got it on TV and they didn’t aspirate them. They just ——” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.41968169808387756}
Dr. Malone: “I don’t know what to say ——” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.44437968730926514}
Mr. Rogan: “I’ll tell you what to say — that’s not the way to do it.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.28219160437583923}
Dr. Malone: “Yeah, and was that really a vaccine? Right, then we go down that whole rabbit ——” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4451316297054291}
Mr. Rogan: “That’s my favorite rabbit hole because of the fake set, remember.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3800100088119507}
False. Aspiration refers to pulling back the plunger of a syringe to check that the needle was not inserted into a blood vessel. The practice and its perceived benefits are the subject of debate among medical professionals. Mr. Rogan and others have wrongly suggested that Mr. Biden has not actually received the vaccine since his shots were not aspirated. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not recommend aspirating before administering any vaccines, as it could cause additional pain. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9828999638557434}
Mr. Biden received his booster shot on camera in September, in front of a backdrop that looks like the White House but is actually in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Some social media posts cited the use of the backdrop as evidence that Mr. Biden had not actually been vaccinated. In reality, Mr. Biden and his predecessors have used the auditorium for events for years. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9766569137573242}
Mr. Rogan: “So, if they had just done what Sweden had done and some other countries where they didn’t institute lockdowns and they sort of let people just live their lives and make their own choices, they were saying that millions of people would have died?” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8073980212211609}
Dr. Malone: “So it would be, so it seems.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4661439061164856}
Mr. Rogan: “But time has shown that Sweden actually had a more effective take on the virus.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3925282657146454}
This is misleading. Unlike many other European countries, Sweden did not impose full-scale lockdowns, though it has enacted some restrictions, including limiting the sizes of gatherings and imposing partial travel bans and social distancing requirements. But Mr. Rogan is wrong to say that Sweden has been “more effective” in curtailing the virus. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8188067674636841}
“Now, we’re two years into this and Sweden doesn’t really stand out,” Anders Tegnell, the country’s chief epidemiologist, told The Financial Times in November. “We’re not the best, but we’re definitely not the worst.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5948113203048706}
Compared with those of other countries in Europe, Sweden’s death rate and case count are indeed in the middle of the pack. Among its Scandinavian neighbors, however, Sweden has the highest death rate. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8647401332855225}
“Those surrounding states in the Palestinian territory does not have that level of vaccine uptake at all. The mortality in the surrounding states in the Palestinian Authority is substantially less from this virus than the mortality in Israel.” — Dr. Malone {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9121547937393188}
False. About two-thirds of the Israeli population had been fully vaccinated by the end of December, compared with about a third of those living in the West Bank and Gaza. The case fatality rate and cumulative death rate from Covid are both higher in the occupied territories than in Israel. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4541431963443756}
“The C.D.C. made the determination that they were going to make a core assumption — if P.C.R. positive and you die — that is death due to Covid. And so the extreme example, just to show the absurdity: If the patient comes in with a bullet hole in the head and they do a nose swab and they come up P.C.R. positive, they’re determined to have died from Covid.” — Dr. Malone {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9603282809257507}
This is misleading. The C.D.C. has issued guidelines on certifying deaths that detail how to track the immediate cause of death, an underlying cause or a significant condition that contributed to the death. The guidelines do not require counting Covid-19 as a cause of death when someone has tested positive but died for unrelated reasons. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.6301319599151611}
Robert Anderson, the chief of mortality statistics at the C.D.C.’s National Center for Health Statistics, said on a podcast in January that a car crash victim who tested positive and died would not be counted as a Covid fatality in “most cases.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8565143942832947}
“Maybe the person comes in and they’ve got a very severe injury and they simply test positive for Covid and there are no symptoms that are likely to be incidental to death,” he said. “But if you had somebody who, let’s say, had chest trauma from the car accident and they were, they’re struggling to breathe already. They get Covid in the hospital and they’re showing some symptoms. There, it could contribute.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.977192223072052}
“Now one of the things that people have said in response to the vaccine injuries is that it’s approximately one in 1,000 that are getting these significant injuries like myocarditis.” — Mr. Rogan {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.43057382106781006}
False. Studies have shown that the Covid-19 vaccine can be associated with an increased risk of myocarditis or inflammation of the heart muscle, but Mr. Rogan’s one-in-1,000 figure comes from a retracted study. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.5627805590629578}
Researchers identified 32 cases of post-vaccine myocarditis in Ottawa from June to July 2021 out of some 32,000 vaccine doses administered. But the actual number of doses administered during that time was more than 800,000. When alerted to the error, the authors withdrew the paper and apologized for their mistake. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9751324653625488}
Moreover, several studies have shown that Covid-19 is more likely to cause myocarditis than the vaccine. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.9110779166221619}
“Ninety-five percent of the people who have died from Covid had an average of four comorbidities.” — Mr. Rogan {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4374438226222992}
This is misleading. Throughout the pandemic, some social media users have misinterpreted data from the C.D.C. to suggest that Covid death counts are inflated. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8569002747535706}
According to the public health agency, the virus has been “the only cause mentioned on the death certificate” for about 5 percent of deaths involving Covid-19. For the other 95 percent of deaths, the certificate listed an average of four additional conditions or causes. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9511735439300537}
But as experts have explained repeatedly, the presence of other conditions or diseases does not mean that Covid-19 was incidental to the death. In fact, Covid-19 is listed as the underlying cause in 91 percent of the cases. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8989278674125671}
For example, someone’s immediate cause of death could be respiratory distress syndrome, which was caused by viral pneumonia, which in turn was caused by the coronavirus. Other comorbidities would be listed on that death certificate, but the underlying cause is still Covid-19. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9913539290428162}
“These mandates of an experimental vaccine are explicitly illegal. They are explicitly inconsistent with the Nuremberg Code. They’re explicitly inconsistent with the Belmont Report.” — Dr. Malone {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6171802878379822}
False. Vaccine mandates do not violate either the Nuremberg Code or the Belmont Report, sets of ethical principles for conducting medical research involving human subjects, given that the Covid-19 vaccines are not experimental. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.3520512878894806}
At the time of the podcast’s release, the Food and Drug Administration had fully approved the vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech and had granted emergency use authorization for the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. Moderna’s vaccine was fully approved in January. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9081960320472717}

To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android. Spotify has been rocked in recent weeks by the controversy engulfing its most popular podcaster, Joe Rogan. Claim Several prominent musicians and podcasters have left the streaming service to protest what they described as Mr. Rogan’s history of promoting misinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines. There have been calls for boycotts, and Mr. Rogan issued an apology for his past use of a racial slur and took down as many as 70 old episodes of his podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” without explanation. The catalyst for much of the controversy was a December episode of his podcast that featured Dr. Robert Malone, a virologist and vaccine skeptic. Hundreds of public health officials and professors, citing the promotion of “several falsehoods about Covid-19 vaccines,” urged the service to crack down on misinformation about the virus. For over three hours, Dr. Malone and Mr. Rogan discussed theories and claims about the coronavirus pandemic and vaccines. The conversation included a false equivalence between the vaccine and Nazi medical experiments, baseless conjecture that President Biden is not actually vaccinated and inaccurate interpretations of government data and guidelines. Evidence Here’s a fact check of some of their claims. Claim “Whatever was in those packages was rumored to include ivermectin. But there was a specific visit of Biden to Modi and a decision was made in the Indian government not to disclose the contents of those packages that were being deployed in Uttar Pradesh, which they’re still there, and Uttar Pradesh is flatlined right now.” — Dr. Malone Evidence This is misleading. Dr. Malone’s suggestion that Mr. Biden urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India to conceal the successful use of the drug ivermectin in Uttar Pradesh, the country’s most populous state, does not add up. Rebuttal It is not exactly a secret that Uttar Pradesh has promoted ivermectin as a prophylactic. The state issued a government notice in August 2020 recommending the prescription of the drug to those who had come into contact with Covid patients, and officials have publicly acknowledged its use throughout the pandemic. Mr. Biden and Mr. Modi met in September, and officials in Uttar Pradesh have continued to publicize the state’s use of ivermectin since, even as India stopped recommending it. Dr. Malone was also wrong that cases in Uttar Pradesh “flatlined” as the world coped with the Omicron variant. Though the case count in the state remained low during the summer and fall, it began to trend upward by late December, when Dr. Malone spoke with Mr. Rogan, and reached more than 11,000 daily cases in mid-January. Promoters of ivermectin often cite Uttar Pradesh’s low death toll as proof of the drug’s efficacy, but experts say there is no proof of that causal link. It is also worth noting that researchers have questioned the reliability of data from Uttar Pradesh. Mr. Rogan: “But I saw the shot where Joe Biden got it on TV and they didn’t aspirate them. They just ——” Evidence Dr. Malone: “I don’t know what to say ——” Mr. Rogan: “I’ll tell you what to say — that’s not the way to do it.” Dr. Malone: “Yeah, and was that really a vaccine? Right, then we go down that whole rabbit ——” Mr. Rogan: “That’s my favorite rabbit hole because of the fake set, remember.” Claim False. Aspiration refers to pulling back the plunger of a syringe to check that the needle was not inserted into a blood vessel. The practice and its perceived benefits are the subject of debate among medical professionals. Mr. Rogan and others have wrongly suggested that Mr. Biden has not actually received the vaccine since his shots were not aspirated. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not recommend aspirating before administering any vaccines, as it could cause additional pain. Mr. Biden received his booster shot on camera in September, in front of a backdrop that looks like the White House but is actually in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Some social media posts cited the use of the backdrop as evidence that Mr. Biden had not actually been vaccinated. In reality, Mr. Biden and his predecessors have used the auditorium for events for years. Mr. Rogan: “So, if they had just done what Sweden had done and some other countries where they didn’t institute lockdowns and they sort of let people just live their lives and make their own choices, they were saying that millions of people would have died?” Evidence Dr. Malone: “So it would be, so it seems.” Mr. Rogan: “But time has shown that Sweden actually had a more effective take on the virus.” Claim This is misleading. Unlike many other European countries, Sweden did not impose full-scale lockdowns, though it has enacted some restrictions, including limiting the sizes of gatherings and imposing partial travel bans and social distancing requirements. But Mr. Rogan is wrong to say that Sweden has been “more effective” in curtailing the virus. Rebuttal “Now, we’re two years into this and Sweden doesn’t really stand out,” Anders Tegnell, the country’s chief epidemiologist, told The Financial Times in November. “We’re not the best, but we’re definitely not the worst.” Compared with those of other countries in Europe, Sweden’s death rate and case count are indeed in the middle of the pack. Among its Scandinavian neighbors, however, Sweden has the highest death rate. “Those surrounding states in the Palestinian territory does not have that level of vaccine uptake at all. The mortality in the surrounding states in the Palestinian Authority is substantially less from this virus than the mortality in Israel.” — Dr. Malone False. About two-thirds of the Israeli population had been fully vaccinated by the end of December, compared with about a third of those living in the West Bank and Gaza. The case fatality rate and cumulative death rate from Covid are both higher in the occupied territories than in Israel. “The C.D.C. made the determination that they were going to make a core assumption — if P.C.R. positive and you die — that is death due to Covid. And so the extreme example, just to show the absurdity: If the patient comes in with a bullet hole in the head and they do a nose swab and they come up P.C.R. positive, they’re determined to have died from Covid.” — Dr. Malone Evidence This is misleading. The C.D.C. has issued guidelines on certifying deaths that detail how to track the immediate cause of death, an underlying cause or a significant condition that contributed to the death. The guidelines do not require counting Covid-19 as a cause of death when someone has tested positive but died for unrelated reasons. Rebuttal Robert Anderson, the chief of mortality statistics at the C.D.C.’s National Center for Health Statistics, said on a podcast in January that a car crash victim who tested positive and died would not be counted as a Covid fatality in “most cases.” “Maybe the person comes in and they’ve got a very severe injury and they simply test positive for Covid and there are no symptoms that are likely to be incidental to death,” he said. “But if you had somebody who, let’s say, had chest trauma from the car accident and they were, they’re struggling to breathe already. They get Covid in the hospital and they’re showing some symptoms. There, it could contribute.” Evidence “Now one of the things that people have said in response to the vaccine injuries is that it’s approximately one in 1,000 that are getting these significant injuries like myocarditis.” — Mr. Rogan Claim False. Studies have shown that the Covid-19 vaccine can be associated with an increased risk of myocarditis or inflammation of the heart muscle, but Mr. Rogan’s one-in-1,000 figure comes from a retracted study. Rebuttal Researchers identified 32 cases of post-vaccine myocarditis in Ottawa from June to July 2021 out of some 32,000 vaccine doses administered. But the actual number of doses administered during that time was more than 800,000. When alerted to the error, the authors withdrew the paper and apologized for their mistake. Evidence Moreover, several studies have shown that Covid-19 is more likely to cause myocarditis than the vaccine. Claim “Ninety-five percent of the people who have died from Covid had an average of four comorbidities.” — Mr. Rogan Evidence This is misleading. Throughout the pandemic, some social media users have misinterpreted data from the C.D.C. to suggest that Covid death counts are inflated. Rebuttal According to the public health agency, the virus has been “the only cause mentioned on the death certificate” for about 5 percent of deaths involving Covid-19. For the other 95 percent of deaths, the certificate listed an average of four additional conditions or causes. Evidence But as experts have explained repeatedly, the presence of other conditions or diseases does not mean that Covid-19 was incidental to the death. In fact, Covid-19 is listed as the underlying cause in 91 percent of the cases. Rebuttal For example, someone’s immediate cause of death could be respiratory distress syndrome, which was caused by viral pneumonia, which in turn was caused by the coronavirus. Other comorbidities would be listed on that death certificate, but the underlying cause is still Covid-19. “These mandates of an experimental vaccine are explicitly illegal. They are explicitly inconsistent with the Nuremberg Code. They’re explicitly inconsistent with the Belmont Report.” — Dr. Malone Evidence False. Vaccine mandates do not violate either the Nuremberg Code or the Belmont Report, sets of ethical principles for conducting medical research involving human subjects, given that the Covid-19 vaccines are not experimental. Rebuttal At the time of the podcast’s release, the Food and Drug Administration had fully approved the vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech and had granted emergency use authorization for the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. Moderna’s vaccine was fully approved in January. Evidence

nytimes\faith-ringgold-new-museum.txt

Using custom data configuration default-2af44b322a0fb802

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-2af44b322a0fb802\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-2af44b322a0fb802\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

If you want to catch the heat of the lava flow that was United States racial politics in the 1960s, the second floor of the New Museum in Manhattan is a good place to go. There you’ll find the earliest work in “Faith Ringgold: American People,” the first local retrospective of the Harlem-born artist in almost 40 years. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8383834958076477}
Now 91, Ringgold was already a committed painter when the Black Power movement erupted. And she had a personal investment in the questions it raised: not just how to survive as a Black person in a racist white world, but how, as a woman, to thrive in any world at all. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.43857434391975403}
As an artist of ambition, she seems to have made strategic decisions for forward movement. One was to be constantly producing, no matter what. Another was to seek out support within a Black matriarchy of family and friends. A third decision — the tough one — was to forge a career path of maximum resistance. To this end, she pursued figure painting, worked with fabric art and focused on narrative content at a time when the mainstream art market wanted little to do with any of these. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7978827953338623}
This retrospective, which fills three floors of the New Museum, combines figures, craft techniques and storytelling in inventive combinations. And it makes clear that what consigned Ringgold to an outlier track half a century ago puts her front and center now. It says a lot about strong art and changing taste that her 1967 mural-size painting “American People Series #20: Die,” an explosive scene of blood-spattered biracial carnage, was a star attraction of the Museum of Modern Art’s much-watched 2019 permanent collection rehang. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9768289923667908}
Stick-to-itiveness and art-making came early to Ringgold. As a child she was frequently housebound with asthma. To keep her occupied her mother, Willi Posey, a seamstress and clothing designer, supplied her with art materials. The creativity stuck. In 1950, she enrolled in art courses at City College of New York. She also married and had, in quick succession, two daughters, one of whom, Michele Wallace, is now a noted art historian, and a collaborator with Ringgold on activist projects. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8775466680526733}
The marriage came and went. What persisted was Ringgold’s interest in art. After earning a graduate degree, she took a job teaching in a public school. There one of her students was the young sister of James Baldwin, whose writings were instrumental in turning Ringgold’s painting — mostly Impressionistic landscape through the 1950s — in a political direction. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8525345325469971}
The retrospective — organized by Massimiliano Gioni, the artistic director of the New Museum, Gary Carrion-Murayari, a curator, and Madeline Weisburg, a curatorial assistant — begins at this turning point moment with a group of brooding, broadly stroked figure paintings called “American People Series.” In one, dated 1963, a row of light-skinned male figures face outward, a wall of blank-eyed malice. In another, called “The Civil Rights Triangle,” four of five men depicted have dark skin, but a light-skinned fifth man towers over them. All the pictures are about hierarchies of power; women are barely even present. Ringgold referred to this early, wary work as “super realist.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9832593202590942}
At this point she approached members of New York’s Black male art establishment — Romare Bearden, Hale Woodruff — for career help but was turned away with what sounds like the equivalent of a pat on the head. She must have realized that she was, professionally, on her own, and maybe that further loosened up her art. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8705706596374512}
In the late 1960s and early ’70s — years marked by police killings of Black activists across the country — her paintings suddenly go big, loud, bull-blast crazy. (MoMA’s “Die”” comes from this time, as does a related picture, “The Flag Is Bleeding,” both done on a mural scale to connect them with Picasso’s “Guernica” and Mexican mural paintings of the past. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9378941655158997}
“I just wanted to give some understanding of what America is about,” Ringgold said of that work, in the catalog interview with Gioni. “You notice there is no Black woman in the picture. The white woman was trying to bring the Black and white man together because she really had no power, and the only way to acquire it was by bringing together the men. Black women were literally out of the picture, period. It took decades before people realized that we existed.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9578682780265808}
Other paintings of the time go almost mute. For a group called “Black Light Series,” Ringgold eliminated white paint entirely from her palette and darkened her colors with black. Faces and bodies seem to float out of reach, submerged, all but invisible. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9452036023139954}
Her political commitments in general expanded. As co-organizer of an anti-Vietnam War exhibition she was accused of desecrating the United States flag and arrested. (The charge was dropped.) She designed posters protesting the jailing of Angela Davis and the killing of prisoners at Attica. She joined Michele Wallace in picketing the Whitney Museum of American Art for its exclusion of Black women artists. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9904357194900513}
Her relationship to the predominantly white feminist movement was guarded, though not to feminism itself. A bold statement of her allegiance came in the form of a mural-style painting she made for the Correctional Institute for Women on Rikers Island in 1971. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8442776203155518}
Long in storage on Rikers and now, at Ringgold’s request, on long-term loan by the city to the Brooklyn Museum, the work is in the show. Using bright colors and a compartmented design based on African textiles, it depicts women of different ages and ethnicities engaged in a range of professions — doctor, athlete, bus driver, United States president — that prisoners, given the chance and resources, might pursue once out in the world. Before getting down to work on the piece, Ringgold invited all the women at Rikers to propose ideas for it. And she discreetly included herself in the picture. (You see her in profile in the picture’s lower right side) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9719879627227783}
Collaboration with women has always figured in her art, beginning with contributions made by her fashion-designer mother, Willi Posey. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5766104459762573}
They first worked together in the early 1970s on the “Feminist Series,” a group of paintings with fabric frames modeled on those of Tibetan thangkas and sewn by her mother. Posey also worked on a group of life-size, African-inspired fabric figures worn by Ringgold in performances or displayed as soft-sculpture tableaus, like the imposing, multipart 1976 “The Wake and Resurrection of the Bicentennial Negro,” installed on the museum’s third floor. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9874947667121887}
Finally, in 1980, Posey sewed Ringgold’s first painted quilt, “Echoes of Harlem,” helping to create the prototype for what would become the artist’s most familiar art medium. After her mother died the following year, Ringgold paid tribute with “Mother’s Quilt,” a quilt appliquéd with doll-like Black figures, like angels, made from fabric scraps the women were saving for future use. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9642911553382874}
An elaboration on the painted quilt form, called “story quilts,” brought Ringgold attention both inside and outside the art world. Vehicles for personal narratives, often annotated with sewn-in text panels, some of these hangings are diaristic, as in the case of “Change: Faith Ringgold’s Over 100 Pound Weight Loss Performance Story Quilt,” from 1991. Most combine fiction and autobiography. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9853124022483826}
Best known of them is the single quilt “Tar Beach,” which illustrates Ringgold’s childhood memory of summer-night picnics on a Harlem rooftop with the George Washington Bridge glowing in the distance. From the quilt, Ringgold derived a suite of drawings, which, in 1991, appeared as a widely praised children’s book, the first of many Ringgold has done. (You can page through all of them in an exhibition reading room on the museum’s 7th floor.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9912978410720825}
The story-quilt form is also the vehicle for Ringgold’s most formally complex and buoyant painting project, “The French Connection,” which unfurls in 12 regally scaled hangings, like chapters, on the midnight-blue walls of the museum’s 4th floor. It related the experience of a single main character, a young African American painter named Willia Marie Simone, who comes to Europe for the first time in the 1920s with her two young children, to immerse herself in European art — a journey, which, as it happens, Ringgold herself made in 1961 for the same reason, and with her mother and daughters in tow. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9887832999229431}
Once settled in, Simone is everywhere, meeting everyone. She poses for Matisse. She spends time in Gertrude Stein’s salon. She joins time-traveling compatriots — Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks — to stitch a sunflower quilt in Van Gogh’s Arles. Finally, back in Paris, she paints an all-female déjeuner sur l’herbe, in which all the picnickers are Ringgold’s family and friends. Actually, there is one male in this scene, Pablo Picasso, posing skinny and nude on a towel on the grass. No one seems to notice him. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9448550939559937}
Overall, “The French Collection” feels, in tone, like a far cry from the grim, damning “American People” pictures of the 1960s (and from the scary, apocalyptic “We Came to America” picture — it’s in the show — that Ringgold painted right after the 12-part series was done). But there’s politics at work in the French paintings, too, embodied in the guiding Black female presence of the cosmopolitan Willia Marie Simone, who is, of course, a version of Ringgold herself. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.8851042985916138}
Half a century ago, a presence like hers had to fight to exist in the mainstream art world. Look around now, and you see it, not everywhere yet, but more and more. Faith Ringgold, artist-agitator-seer, can be thanked for that. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6851800084114075}

If you want to catch the heat of the lava flow that was United States racial politics in the 1960s, the second floor of the New Museum in Manhattan is a good place to go. There you’ll find the earliest work in “Faith Ringgold: American People,” the first local retrospective of the Harlem-born artist in almost 40 years. Now 91, Ringgold was already a committed painter when the Black Power movement erupted. And she had a personal investment in the questions it raised: not just how to survive as a Black person in a racist white world, but how, as a woman, to thrive in any world at all. As an artist of ambition, she seems to have made strategic decisions for forward movement. One was to be constantly producing, no matter what. Another was to seek out support within a Black matriarchy of family and friends. A third decision — the tough one — was to forge a career path of maximum resistance. To this end, she pursued figure painting, worked with fabric art and focused on narrative content at a time when the mainstream art market wanted little to do with any of these. This retrospective, which fills three floors of the New Museum, combines figures, craft techniques and storytelling in inventive combinations. And it makes clear that what consigned Ringgold to an outlier track half a century ago puts her front and center now. It says a lot about strong art and changing taste that her 1967 mural-size painting “American People Series #20: Die,” an explosive scene of blood-spattered biracial carnage, was a star attraction of the Museum of Modern Art’s much-watched 2019 permanent collection rehang. Stick-to-itiveness and art-making came early to Ringgold. As a child she was frequently housebound with asthma. To keep her occupied her mother, Willi Posey, a seamstress and clothing designer, supplied her with art materials. The creativity stuck. In 1950, she enrolled in art courses at City College of New York. She also married and had, in quick succession, two daughters, one of whom, Michele Wallace, is now a noted art historian, and a collaborator with Ringgold on activist projects. The marriage came and went. What persisted was Ringgold’s interest in art. After earning a graduate degree, she took a job teaching in a public school. There one of her students was the young sister of James Baldwin, whose writings were instrumental in turning Ringgold’s painting — mostly Impressionistic landscape through the 1950s — in a political direction. The retrospective — organized by Massimiliano Gioni, the artistic director of the New Museum, Gary Carrion-Murayari, a curator, and Madeline Weisburg, a curatorial assistant — begins at this turning point moment with a group of brooding, broadly stroked figure paintings called “American People Series.” In one, dated 1963, a row of light-skinned male figures face outward, a wall of blank-eyed malice. In another, called “The Civil Rights Triangle,” four of five men depicted have dark skin, but a light-skinned fifth man towers over them. All the pictures are about hierarchies of power; women are barely even present. Ringgold referred to this early, wary work as “super realist.” At this point she approached members of New York’s Black male art establishment — Romare Bearden, Hale Woodruff — for career help but was turned away with what sounds like the equivalent of a pat on the head. She must have realized that she was, professionally, on her own, and maybe that further loosened up her art. In the late 1960s and early ’70s — years marked by police killings of Black activists across the country — her paintings suddenly go big, loud, bull-blast crazy. (MoMA’s “Die”” comes from this time, as does a related picture, “The Flag Is Bleeding,” both done on a mural scale to connect them with Picasso’s “Guernica” and Mexican mural paintings of the past. “I just wanted to give some understanding of what America is about,” Ringgold said of that work, in the catalog interview with Gioni. “You notice there is no Black woman in the picture. The white woman was trying to bring the Black and white man together because she really had no power, and the only way to acquire it was by bringing together the men. Black women were literally out of the picture, period. It took decades before people realized that we existed.” Other paintings of the time go almost mute. For a group called “Black Light Series,” Ringgold eliminated white paint entirely from her palette and darkened her colors with black. Faces and bodies seem to float out of reach, submerged, all but invisible. Her political commitments in general expanded. As co-organizer of an anti-Vietnam War exhibition she was accused of desecrating the United States flag and arrested. (The charge was dropped.) She designed posters protesting the jailing of Angela Davis and the killing of prisoners at Attica. She joined Michele Wallace in picketing the Whitney Museum of American Art for its exclusion of Black women artists. Her relationship to the predominantly white feminist movement was guarded, though not to feminism itself. A bold statement of her allegiance came in the form of a mural-style painting she made for the Correctional Institute for Women on Rikers Island in 1971. Long in storage on Rikers and now, at Ringgold’s request, on long-term loan by the city to the Brooklyn Museum, the work is in the show. Using bright colors and a compartmented design based on African textiles, it depicts women of different ages and ethnicities engaged in a range of professions — doctor, athlete, bus driver, United States president — that prisoners, given the chance and resources, might pursue once out in the world. Before getting down to work on the piece, Ringgold invited all the women at Rikers to propose ideas for it. And she discreetly included herself in the picture. (You see her in profile in the picture’s lower right side) Evidence Collaboration with women has always figured in her art, beginning with contributions made by her fashion-designer mother, Willi Posey. Claim They first worked together in the early 1970s on the “Feminist Series,” a group of paintings with fabric frames modeled on those of Tibetan thangkas and sewn by her mother. Posey also worked on a group of life-size, African-inspired fabric figures worn by Ringgold in performances or displayed as soft-sculpture tableaus, like the imposing, multipart 1976 “The Wake and Resurrection of the Bicentennial Negro,” installed on the museum’s third floor. Finally, in 1980, Posey sewed Ringgold’s first painted quilt, “Echoes of Harlem,” helping to create the prototype for what would become the artist’s most familiar art medium. After her mother died the following year, Ringgold paid tribute with “Mother’s Quilt,” a quilt appliquéd with doll-like Black figures, like angels, made from fabric scraps the women were saving for future use. An elaboration on the painted quilt form, called “story quilts,” brought Ringgold attention both inside and outside the art world. Vehicles for personal narratives, often annotated with sewn-in text panels, some of these hangings are diaristic, as in the case of “Change: Faith Ringgold’s Over 100 Pound Weight Loss Performance Story Quilt,” from 1991. Most combine fiction and autobiography. Best known of them is the single quilt “Tar Beach,” which illustrates Ringgold’s childhood memory of summer-night picnics on a Harlem rooftop with the George Washington Bridge glowing in the distance. From the quilt, Ringgold derived a suite of drawings, which, in 1991, appeared as a widely praised children’s book, the first of many Ringgold has done. (You can page through all of them in an exhibition reading room on the museum’s 7th floor.) The story-quilt form is also the vehicle for Ringgold’s most formally complex and buoyant painting project, “The French Connection,” which unfurls in 12 regally scaled hangings, like chapters, on the midnight-blue walls of the museum’s 4th floor. It related the experience of a single main character, a young African American painter named Willia Marie Simone, who comes to Europe for the first time in the 1920s with her two young children, to immerse herself in European art — a journey, which, as it happens, Ringgold herself made in 1961 for the same reason, and with her mother and daughters in tow. Once settled in, Simone is everywhere, meeting everyone. She poses for Matisse. She spends time in Gertrude Stein’s salon. She joins time-traveling compatriots — Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks — to stitch a sunflower quilt in Van Gogh’s Arles. Finally, back in Paris, she paints an all-female déjeuner sur l’herbe, in which all the picnickers are Ringgold’s family and friends. Actually, there is one male in this scene, Pablo Picasso, posing skinny and nude on a towel on the grass. No one seems to notice him. Evidence Overall, “The French Collection” feels, in tone, like a far cry from the grim, damning “American People” pictures of the 1960s (and from the scary, apocalyptic “We Came to America” picture — it’s in the show — that Ringgold painted right after the 12-part series was done). But there’s politics at work in the French paintings, too, embodied in the guiding Black female presence of the cosmopolitan Willia Marie Simone, who is, of course, a version of Ringgold herself. Concluding Statement Half a century ago, a presence like hers had to fight to exist in the mainstream art world. Look around now, and you see it, not everywhere yet, but more and more. Faith Ringgold, artist-agitator-seer, can be thanked for that. Evidence

nytimes\family-birthday-reminders-social-qs.txt

Using custom data configuration default-f60f5f0dd5e2b54c

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-f60f5f0dd5e2b54c\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-f60f5f0dd5e2b54c\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

I have three grown sons, all married with children. The wives of the older two meticulously observe every family birthday and milestone event with cards and gifts. My youngest son didn’t marry until his mid-30s. While single, he often neglected these occasions. I would remind him about them, particularly for his young nieces and nephews, but he was spotty about acknowledging them. And I heard frequently from my daughters-in-law about hurt feelings. Now that he’s married, I had hoped his wife would take up the cause of cards and gifts for family unity. She hasn’t. And my other daughters-in-law still let me know about every omission. What more should I do? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9270946383476257}
AMY {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.9901412129402161}
Before we deal with your problem, let’s deal with mine: All we’ve heard about the men in your family is that two of them married meticulous gift givers, and the youngest (who was spotty at it) hitched his wagon to an underperformer. Yet somehow these men — the actual blood relations — aren’t expected to pitch in at all. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7678651213645935}
Now, there’s no problem here if each of the couples has agreed to this division of labor. But it seems sexist to simply expect the new woman to solve the problem of family gifts. It may also explain why you hear from your grumpy daughters-in-law about this, and not your sons. They may resent their burden. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.612270176410675}
As for what you can do: Extricate yourself! I know you want family harmony, but you can’t force adults to send gifts. If your sons or their wives tell you they’re upset about this, suggest they speak directly to your youngest son. This may be more motivating for him than hearing from you again. He and his wife may not be “gift people,” but we all have calendars. (Or they may not care.) Stay out of it. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9797813892364502}
My roommate and I have shared an apartment for three years. We’re tight. Lately, he’s been seeing a girl he met on Tinder. I never had a good feeling about her. It’s like she’s always looking over his shoulder. Last week, she came over to pick up some stuff and was fully flirting with me: touching my arm and saying we should hang out. I know you say we shouldn’t comment on friends’ relationships if we don’t know what their agreements are. So, I didn’t tell him, but I’m not comfortable. Advice? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.547078549861908}
FRIEND {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.9942585229873657}
No, no, no! My general advice to stay out of other people’s romantic relationships never argued for silence in the face of your roommate’s girlfriend hitting on you. I would have suggested you keep quiet if vague dislike was your total complaint, but that option went out the window when she crossed the line with you. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.4777933359146118}
Tell your friend what happened calmly and objectively. There is still no need to share your poor opinion of her or give him unsolicited relationship advice. Be supportive, instead. He may be hurt, and your kindness will mean more to him than criticism of her. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8773623704910278}
A friend is having a small destination party for her 40th birthday in another city. I was not invited, but she told me about it when I asked her how she was celebrating. A few days before the event, I received an email from her husband inviting me to contribute to a fund (organized by her friends) to buy a piece of art as a birthday gift for her. So, it seems I’ve been invited to participate in the present, but not the party. How should I respond? {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.8236983418464661}
FRIEND {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.9942585229873657}
I know this will cause a ruckus among the tit-for-tat gifting crowd, but the birthday couple did nothing wrong here. The only reason you know about your friend’s small destination party is because you asked her about it directly. That does not entitle you to an invitation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9456411004066467}
Likewise, your friend’s husband simply forwarded an invitation to contribute to a crowdsourced gift (arranged by friends) in honor of her milestone birthday. Ignore it if you prefer not to contribute — or subscribe to the idea that you must get something in order to give. But don’t reach for epithets like “tacky,” as some readers may. It’s ungenerous. And standing guard against small financial imbalances is itself kind of tacky. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9888883233070374}
A co-worker moved in next door, and there’s not much distance between our houses. We’ve worked together for years, but we’re not friends. The family uses strongly scented dryer sheets, and the smell is driving me crazy. I’d like to bring them unscented ones to use instead. Thoughts? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7969985604286194}
NEIGHBOR {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.9946141839027405}
Wait! You smell their dryer sheets inside your house? (Never mind.) You can always ask. But if you go next door, make clear to your neighbors that you are asking for a favor. They have no obligation to cater to your heightened sense of smell. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.6421917676925659}
If you are pleasant enough, and careful not to convey grievance, they may go along with you. Also, they may not — in which case, you should head home without another word on the subject. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.693264365196228}

I have three grown sons, all married with children. The wives of the older two meticulously observe every family birthday and milestone event with cards and gifts. My youngest son didn’t marry until his mid-30s. While single, he often neglected these occasions. I would remind him about them, particularly for his young nieces and nephews, but he was spotty about acknowledging them. And I heard frequently from my daughters-in-law about hurt feelings. Now that he’s married, I had hoped his wife would take up the cause of cards and gifts for family unity. She hasn’t. And my other daughters-in-law still let me know about every omission. What more should I do? Evidence AMY Claim Before we deal with your problem, let’s deal with mine: All we’ve heard about the men in your family is that two of them married meticulous gift givers, and the youngest (who was spotty at it) hitched his wagon to an underperformer. Yet somehow these men — the actual blood relations — aren’t expected to pitch in at all. Now, there’s no problem here if each of the couples has agreed to this division of labor. But it seems sexist to simply expect the new woman to solve the problem of family gifts. It may also explain why you hear from your grumpy daughters-in-law about this, and not your sons. They may resent their burden. As for what you can do: Extricate yourself! I know you want family harmony, but you can’t force adults to send gifts. If your sons or their wives tell you they’re upset about this, suggest they speak directly to your youngest son. This may be more motivating for him than hearing from you again. He and his wife may not be “gift people,” but we all have calendars. (Or they may not care.) Stay out of it. My roommate and I have shared an apartment for three years. We’re tight. Lately, he’s been seeing a girl he met on Tinder. I never had a good feeling about her. It’s like she’s always looking over his shoulder. Last week, she came over to pick up some stuff and was fully flirting with me: touching my arm and saying we should hang out. I know you say we shouldn’t comment on friends’ relationships if we don’t know what their agreements are. So, I didn’t tell him, but I’m not comfortable. Advice? Evidence FRIEND Claim No, no, no! My general advice to stay out of other people’s romantic relationships never argued for silence in the face of your roommate’s girlfriend hitting on you. I would have suggested you keep quiet if vague dislike was your total complaint, but that option went out the window when she crossed the line with you. Rebuttal Tell your friend what happened calmly and objectively. There is still no need to share your poor opinion of her or give him unsolicited relationship advice. Be supportive, instead. He may be hurt, and your kindness will mean more to him than criticism of her. Evidence A friend is having a small destination party for her 40th birthday in another city. I was not invited, but she told me about it when I asked her how she was celebrating. A few days before the event, I received an email from her husband inviting me to contribute to a fund (organized by her friends) to buy a piece of art as a birthday gift for her. So, it seems I’ve been invited to participate in the present, but not the party. How should I respond? Lead FRIEND Claim I know this will cause a ruckus among the tit-for-tat gifting crowd, but the birthday couple did nothing wrong here. The only reason you know about your friend’s small destination party is because you asked her about it directly. That does not entitle you to an invitation. Likewise, your friend’s husband simply forwarded an invitation to contribute to a crowdsourced gift (arranged by friends) in honor of her milestone birthday. Ignore it if you prefer not to contribute — or subscribe to the idea that you must get something in order to give. But don’t reach for epithets like “tacky,” as some readers may. It’s ungenerous. And standing guard against small financial imbalances is itself kind of tacky. A co-worker moved in next door, and there’s not much distance between our houses. We’ve worked together for years, but we’re not friends. The family uses strongly scented dryer sheets, and the smell is driving me crazy. I’d like to bring them unscented ones to use instead. Thoughts? Evidence NEIGHBOR Claim Wait! You smell their dryer sheets inside your house? (Never mind.) You can always ask. But if you go next door, make clear to your neighbors that you are asking for a favor. They have no obligation to cater to your heightened sense of smell. Lead If you are pleasant enough, and careful not to convey grievance, they may go along with you. Also, they may not — in which case, you should head home without another word on the subject. Evidence

nytimes\federal-reserve-trading-restrictions.txt

Using custom data configuration default-076469b233c5d75c

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-076469b233c5d75c\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-076469b233c5d75c\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

The Federal Reserve on Friday adopted a new set of ethics rules meant to prevent questionable financial market trading activity by top officials, a sweeping response to a scandal that has rocked the central bank since late last year. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5827720165252686}
Fed officials traded in individual stocks, real estate securities and stock funds in 2020, a year in which the central bank rolled out a range of pandemic response programs that placed officials’ day-to-day decisions at the core of what happened in financial markets. Three high-ranking policymakers resigned earlier than they had planned after news of the trading broke last year and early in 2022. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9932693839073181}
Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, acknowledged in the wake of the revelations that he and his colleagues were not “happy” with what had happened and said they would revamp the central bank’s ethics rules to prevent a similar situation in the future. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6366201639175415}
The new rules, which were previewed in October, aim to fulfill that promise. They prevent senior officials from purchasing individual stocks or funds tracing business sectors, the Fed said, and they ban investments in individual bonds, cryptocurrencies, commodities or foreign currencies, among other securities. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6895790100097656}
Senior Fed officials must now announce that they are buying or selling a security 45 days in advance, and that notice will not be retractable. Investments must be held for at least one year under the new guidelines. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8912141919136047}
The Fed’s 12 regional bank presidents will be required to publicly disclose securities transactions within 30 days, the way that its seven board members in Washington already do. They must post financial disclosures on their bank websites, something they now do only sporadically. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9440893530845642}
The fresh set of rules will apply to a wide array of personnel with access to sensitive information, from reserve bank first vice presidents and research directors to high-ranking staff members and people designated by the chair. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5552772283554077}
The Fed will also extend its financial trading blackout period — which typically applies in the run-up to Fed meetings — by one day after each meeting. That will align it with the period in which Fed officials are not allowed to give speeches. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8053044080734253}
Most of the restrictions will take effect on May 1, although the new rules on the advance notice and preclearance of transactions will take effect on July 1. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6030272841453552}
Financial disclosures released in late 2021 showed that Robert S. Kaplan, the former Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas president, had made big individual-stock trades, while Eric S. Rosengren, the Boston Fed president, had traded in real estate securities. Mr. Kaplan resigned in September, citing the scandal; Mr. Rosengren resigned simultaneously, citing health issues. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9890186786651611}
Richard H. Clarida, then the Fed’s vice chair, sold and then rapidly repurchased a stock fund on the eve of a major Fed decision, corrected financial disclosures showed. Mr. Clarida also resigned slightly earlier than planned, though he did not cite a reason. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9316601157188416}

The Federal Reserve on Friday adopted a new set of ethics rules meant to prevent questionable financial market trading activity by top officials, a sweeping response to a scandal that has rocked the central bank since late last year. Fed officials traded in individual stocks, real estate securities and stock funds in 2020, a year in which the central bank rolled out a range of pandemic response programs that placed officials’ day-to-day decisions at the core of what happened in financial markets. Three high-ranking policymakers resigned earlier than they had planned after news of the trading broke last year and early in 2022. Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, acknowledged in the wake of the revelations that he and his colleagues were not “happy” with what had happened and said they would revamp the central bank’s ethics rules to prevent a similar situation in the future. The new rules, which were previewed in October, aim to fulfill that promise. They prevent senior officials from purchasing individual stocks or funds tracing business sectors, the Fed said, and they ban investments in individual bonds, cryptocurrencies, commodities or foreign currencies, among other securities. Senior Fed officials must now announce that they are buying or selling a security 45 days in advance, and that notice will not be retractable. Investments must be held for at least one year under the new guidelines. The Fed’s 12 regional bank presidents will be required to publicly disclose securities transactions within 30 days, the way that its seven board members in Washington already do. They must post financial disclosures on their bank websites, something they now do only sporadically. Evidence The fresh set of rules will apply to a wide array of personnel with access to sensitive information, from reserve bank first vice presidents and research directors to high-ranking staff members and people designated by the chair. Claim The Fed will also extend its financial trading blackout period — which typically applies in the run-up to Fed meetings — by one day after each meeting. That will align it with the period in which Fed officials are not allowed to give speeches. Most of the restrictions will take effect on May 1, although the new rules on the advance notice and preclearance of transactions will take effect on July 1. Financial disclosures released in late 2021 showed that Robert S. Kaplan, the former Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas president, had made big individual-stock trades, while Eric S. Rosengren, the Boston Fed president, had traded in real estate securities. Mr. Kaplan resigned in September, citing the scandal; Mr. Rosengren resigned simultaneously, citing health issues. Richard H. Clarida, then the Fed’s vice chair, sold and then rapidly repurchased a stock fund on the eve of a major Fed decision, corrected financial disclosures showed. Mr. Clarida also resigned slightly earlier than planned, though he did not cite a reason. Evidence

nytimes\felicity-ace-vessel-fire.txt

Using custom data configuration default-5b9a217691a70eb9

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-5b9a217691a70eb9\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-5b9a217691a70eb9\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

A mammoth cargo ship believed to be carrying thousands of vehicles including 1,100 Porsches was on fire and drifting off the coast of the Azores on Thursday after its 22 crew members were rescued from the vessel. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9494319558143616}
The fire broke out on Wednesday morning in the cargo hold of the ship, called the Felicity Ace, which had departed from Emden, Germany, on Feb. 10 and was scheduled to arrive in the port of Davisville, R.I., on Wednesday, according to a ship tracking website. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9646376967430115}
The ship was about 200 miles from Terceira Island in the Azores, the Portuguese island territory, when Portuguese forces moved in on Wednesday to evacuate the crew. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7266181707382202}
No rescuers or crew members were injured in the “highly skilled and physically demanding” operation, which included a helicopter that whisked the crew members to the nearby Portuguese island of Faial, according to the authorities. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.760994017124176}
It was unclear how much of the 650-foot, 60,000-ton cargo ship’s inventory was lost in the fire and how the authorities would tend to the stricken ship. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7184502482414246}
The Drive, an automotive website, reported that the Volkswagen Group estimated nearly 4,000 vehicles were on board, including 189 Bentleys. Emails sent to the Volkswagen Group were not immediately answered. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9159002900123596}
On Friday, Boskalis, a Dutch marine services company, said that a team of 16 experts from a subsidiary, SMIT Salvage, had been mobilized and that large equipment was en route from Spain and the Netherlands to help put out the fire on the ship. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.915717601776123}
Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, which operated the Felicity Ace, said it had established an incident response team to coordinate the emergency and would “make every effort to contain the damage and resolve the situation.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6995425224304199}
Photos released on Friday by the Portuguese navy showed smoke billowing from the ship and at least one firefighting boat dousing the vessel with water. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7855887413024902}
The fire comes as showrooms across the country are trying to meet consumer demand amid supply-chain problems caused partly by the pandemic. Low interest rates, higher savings rates and government stimulus payments have increased demand, while automakers have struggled to weather a shortage of computer chips. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9329845905303955}
Matt Farah, a car enthusiast and editor of The Smoking Tire, had been waiting for his 2022 frozen-berry metallic Boxster Spyder, with a retail price of about $123,000 and modified to his precise specifications, since August. “The best sports car of all time, hands down,” he wrote. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7748998403549194}
He received disappointing news on Wednesday, he said: “I just got a call from my dealer. My car is now adrift, possibly on fire, in the middle of the ocean.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8733260631561279}
In a statement on Thursday, Mr. Farah said that a Porsche representative confirmed that his car was on the boat and apologized for the inconvenience. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7112842202186584}
“That was yesterday, and I have not heard any updates since,” he said. “I’m glad no one was hurt in the fire and everyone is safe, which is the most important thing. I’m sure that whatever happens going forward, Porsche will do right by their customers.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9079644083976746}
In a statement on Thursday evening, a spokeswoman for Porsche Cars North America said that 1,100 of the company’s cars were on board but that the fate of the vehicles was unknown. She encouraged customers worried about their car to contact their dealer. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9641194939613342}
“Our immediate thoughts are of relief that the 22 crew members of the merchant ship Felicity Ace are safe and well,” the statement said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5277851223945618}

A mammoth cargo ship believed to be carrying thousands of vehicles including 1,100 Porsches was on fire and drifting off the coast of the Azores on Thursday after its 22 crew members were rescued from the vessel. The fire broke out on Wednesday morning in the cargo hold of the ship, called the Felicity Ace, which had departed from Emden, Germany, on Feb. 10 and was scheduled to arrive in the port of Davisville, R.I., on Wednesday, according to a ship tracking website. The ship was about 200 miles from Terceira Island in the Azores, the Portuguese island territory, when Portuguese forces moved in on Wednesday to evacuate the crew. No rescuers or crew members were injured in the “highly skilled and physically demanding” operation, which included a helicopter that whisked the crew members to the nearby Portuguese island of Faial, according to the authorities. It was unclear how much of the 650-foot, 60,000-ton cargo ship’s inventory was lost in the fire and how the authorities would tend to the stricken ship. The Drive, an automotive website, reported that the Volkswagen Group estimated nearly 4,000 vehicles were on board, including 189 Bentleys. Emails sent to the Volkswagen Group were not immediately answered. On Friday, Boskalis, a Dutch marine services company, said that a team of 16 experts from a subsidiary, SMIT Salvage, had been mobilized and that large equipment was en route from Spain and the Netherlands to help put out the fire on the ship. Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, which operated the Felicity Ace, said it had established an incident response team to coordinate the emergency and would “make every effort to contain the damage and resolve the situation.” Photos released on Friday by the Portuguese navy showed smoke billowing from the ship and at least one firefighting boat dousing the vessel with water. The fire comes as showrooms across the country are trying to meet consumer demand amid supply-chain problems caused partly by the pandemic. Low interest rates, higher savings rates and government stimulus payments have increased demand, while automakers have struggled to weather a shortage of computer chips. Matt Farah, a car enthusiast and editor of The Smoking Tire, had been waiting for his 2022 frozen-berry metallic Boxster Spyder, with a retail price of about $123,000 and modified to his precise specifications, since August. “The best sports car of all time, hands down,” he wrote. He received disappointing news on Wednesday, he said: “I just got a call from my dealer. My car is now adrift, possibly on fire, in the middle of the ocean.” In a statement on Thursday, Mr. Farah said that a Porsche representative confirmed that his car was on the boat and apologized for the inconvenience. “That was yesterday, and I have not heard any updates since,” he said. “I’m glad no one was hurt in the fire and everyone is safe, which is the most important thing. I’m sure that whatever happens going forward, Porsche will do right by their customers.” In a statement on Thursday evening, a spokeswoman for Porsche Cars North America said that 1,100 of the company’s cars were on board but that the fate of the vehicles was unknown. She encouraged customers worried about their car to contact their dealer. “Our immediate thoughts are of relief that the 22 crew members of the merchant ship Felicity Ace are safe and well,” the statement said. Evidence

nytimes\finland-bordertown-piece-of-my-heart.txt

Using custom data configuration default-9c9cdfce705bc222

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-9c9cdfce705bc222\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-9c9cdfce705bc222\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Americans who stream a lot of television are likely to have some familiarity with British or South Korean or Latin American TV. They may even have an idea of what to expect from a Turkish or Israeli or South African show. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8114705085754395}
It’s less likely that “Finnish TV” would conjure anything in their minds besides snow, or images of dour crime dramas from more celebrated TV-producing neighbors like Denmark and Sweden. But in a TV Venn diagram whose circles were tiny population, high productivity and “surprisingly enjoyable,” Finland would be in the center. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8876912593841553}
Don’t go looking for Finnish comedies — they may exist, but they don’t appear to be what the streaming services are buying. What you’re going to find are dramas, typically ones that bring a twist to familiar genres. They also tend to have an unforced seriousness, without the sanctimony or self-consciousness that often mar their American counterparts. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6587053537368774}
Here’s a look at some of the most recent Finnish shows to come to American screens, along with a slightly older one that has come closer than any other Finnish drama to really breaking through in the United States. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5042485594749451}
Premiering Thursday on the streaming service Topic (also home to “The Killing,” an icon of Scandinavian Noir), this eight-episode drama takes the conventions of the buddy-cop show and transfers them to an occupation not often featured on TV: child protective services. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7308379411697388}
Rita (Lotta Lehtikari) is the embittered veteran obsessed with a case that went wrong; Laura (Niina Koponen) is the idealistic, empathetic newcomer. They adjust to each other while going out on calls — yes, it’s a child-welfare procedural — involving Helsinki’s homeless, abused or simply troubled youngsters. Freaked-out parents and disingenuous bureaucrats are the antagonists; the police, the usual heroes in this sort of scenario, are a necessary evil, indifferent and sometimes hostile. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8620741367340088}
A few American shows, like “Judging Amy” and “The Guardian,” have ventured into this territory; “Piece of My Heart” may seem a little drab and slow by comparison, but it’s also more inclined to focus on the actual logistics of caring for children and less on the heart-tugging problems of the people providing the care, which is refreshing. (Rita and Laura have plenty of issues, including Rita’s continuing struggles with the case that hobbled her career, but the show doesn’t overly indulge them — the tone is “get over it and do your job.”) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9682027101516724}
An American viewer also may be grimly amused by the portrayal of social work in one of the world’s most advanced welfare states, such as when Laura takes a teenage girl shopping to buy furniture for her new duplex apartment, all provided by the government. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4339570999145508}
Released in 2015 but making its American debut last month on MHz Choice, “Replacements” is a hospital show whose weekly will-they-make-it? drama is, in true Finnish style, in the service of a season-long debate about medical ethics. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.339727520942688}
The central characters could have been lifted from “Grey’s Anatomy”: an arrogant and famous doctor and his gifted, self-righteous daughter, who works as a nurse while attending medical school and has a blood disease that’s typically fatal. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6120237112045288}
But there’s so much more. The daughter, Sofia (Elena Leeve), discovers that she’s been kept alive by a bit of not just unethical but also illegal experimentation carried out years before by her father, who is also a scientist involved in stem cell research. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.9195212125778198}
Sofia is inclined to expose her father’s dirty deeds, but doing so would bring an end to the good work he does as well as threaten her own health. It’s an ingenious setup: While she dithers, tap dancing with investigators and berating dad every chance she gets, she is also drawn into the cutting-edge work he and his team are doing. The show, therefore, gets to have case-of-the-week episodes while exploring, in more detail than we’re used to, the science and ethics of cloning and gene therapy. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7961521744728088}
As the highhanded but crafty scientist, Taneli Makela steals the show, bringing a perfectly controlled blend of intellectual disdain and deadpan humor to lines like, “You don’t want us to throw a perfectly good fetus away, do you?” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4893278479576111}
“The Americans” and the “Deutschland” series set a high bar in the category of well-written, sleekly produced Cold War period dramas. Finland’s contribution to the genre, “Shadow Lines,” whose second season premiered in December on Sundance Now, is not far off in storytelling and production value. And it is distinguished by a strain of existential earnestness: The Finnish agents’ contributions to world-shaking events are taking place just down the road from the Soviet Union. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7512764930725098}
Emmi Parviainen plays Helena, a college student with a murky past who joins a secret unit of the security services in 1955, when the United States and the Soviet Union are both deeply interested in the outcome of the next Finnish presidential election. The C.I.A. is determined to keep the left-leaning Urho Kekkonen (Janne Reinikainen) out of office, while the K.G.B. is working just as hard to get him in. (The real-life Kekkonen won — he served for 26 years — and he does in the show as well, setting up the second season’s story lines.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9166101217269897}
Helena’s group, known as Fist, watches, infiltrates and tries to thwart the plans of both of its much larger and better equipped intelligence rivals, and the Finns’ resourcefulness and bravery make for satisfyingly tense entertainment in this well-above-average spy drama. The action is crisp, the violence is realistic, and the costume and set designers convincingly evoke the early days of the Cold War. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9569776654243469}
The three seasons of this cop show, available on Netflix, have probably done more than anything else to draw attention to Finnish TV. The third premiered on Netflix in 2020, as the pandemic was setting in, and no announcement has been made, one way or the other, about a Season 4. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9147650003433228}
The main attraction of “Bordertown” is the sly performance of Ville Virtanen as Kari Sorjonen, a classic idiosyncratic but high-functioning detective in the Sherlock Holmes mode. His eyes dart and his limbs twitch as he scans a crime scene before muttering, almost defensively, an uncanny analysis of the “We’re looking for a short woman in a blue parka with a limp” variety. Most shows play this sort of thing for humor, but in “Bordertown” it’s done straight — Kari is just that good. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9456478953361511}
“Bordertown” may be the best current exemplar of Scandinavian noir, and it doesn’t depart in any significant way from the norms of that genre. Kari himself is strongly reminiscent of the somewhere-on-the-spectrum detective Saga Noren in the Danish-Swedish production “The Bridge,” and Kari’s partnership with the former Russian agent Lena Jaakkola (Anu Sinisalo) recalls the pairing of Noren, a Swede, with a Danish detective. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8896502256393433}
Its Finnishness is partly a matter of isolation: The show takes place in Lappeenranta, a small, isolated city near the Russian border. Kari leaves a high-profile job in Helsinki and takes his family to the woods because he wants a place with “cozy crime.” He of course finds the opposite, partly because of the proximity of Russia, and the dead bodies just keep washing up. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9845585227012634}
But the show also has a modesty that may be Finnish in nature: Its violence and lurid transgressions are presented with more reserve than usual, and with less of a sense of grim satisfaction. The emotional lives of the detectives in Scandinavian dramas are often bleak, blank books, but “Bordertown” puts an honest focus on Kari’s and Lena’s families and the friendships that develop among them. There are some rays of sun among the noir. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.6141608357429504}

Americans who stream a lot of television are likely to have some familiarity with British or South Korean or Latin American TV. They may even have an idea of what to expect from a Turkish or Israeli or South African show. It’s less likely that “Finnish TV” would conjure anything in their minds besides snow, or images of dour crime dramas from more celebrated TV-producing neighbors like Denmark and Sweden. But in a TV Venn diagram whose circles were tiny population, high productivity and “surprisingly enjoyable,” Finland would be in the center. Don’t go looking for Finnish comedies — they may exist, but they don’t appear to be what the streaming services are buying. What you’re going to find are dramas, typically ones that bring a twist to familiar genres. They also tend to have an unforced seriousness, without the sanctimony or self-consciousness that often mar their American counterparts. Evidence Here’s a look at some of the most recent Finnish shows to come to American screens, along with a slightly older one that has come closer than any other Finnish drama to really breaking through in the United States. Claim Premiering Thursday on the streaming service Topic (also home to “The Killing,” an icon of Scandinavian Noir), this eight-episode drama takes the conventions of the buddy-cop show and transfers them to an occupation not often featured on TV: child protective services. Rita (Lotta Lehtikari) is the embittered veteran obsessed with a case that went wrong; Laura (Niina Koponen) is the idealistic, empathetic newcomer. They adjust to each other while going out on calls — yes, it’s a child-welfare procedural — involving Helsinki’s homeless, abused or simply troubled youngsters. Freaked-out parents and disingenuous bureaucrats are the antagonists; the police, the usual heroes in this sort of scenario, are a necessary evil, indifferent and sometimes hostile. A few American shows, like “Judging Amy” and “The Guardian,” have ventured into this territory; “Piece of My Heart” may seem a little drab and slow by comparison, but it’s also more inclined to focus on the actual logistics of caring for children and less on the heart-tugging problems of the people providing the care, which is refreshing. (Rita and Laura have plenty of issues, including Rita’s continuing struggles with the case that hobbled her career, but the show doesn’t overly indulge them — the tone is “get over it and do your job.”) An American viewer also may be grimly amused by the portrayal of social work in one of the world’s most advanced welfare states, such as when Laura takes a teenage girl shopping to buy furniture for her new duplex apartment, all provided by the government. Evidence Released in 2015 but making its American debut last month on MHz Choice, “Replacements” is a hospital show whose weekly will-they-make-it? drama is, in true Finnish style, in the service of a season-long debate about medical ethics. Claim The central characters could have been lifted from “Grey’s Anatomy”: an arrogant and famous doctor and his gifted, self-righteous daughter, who works as a nurse while attending medical school and has a blood disease that’s typically fatal. Evidence But there’s so much more. The daughter, Sofia (Elena Leeve), discovers that she’s been kept alive by a bit of not just unethical but also illegal experimentation carried out years before by her father, who is also a scientist involved in stem cell research. Rebuttal Sofia is inclined to expose her father’s dirty deeds, but doing so would bring an end to the good work he does as well as threaten her own health. It’s an ingenious setup: While she dithers, tap dancing with investigators and berating dad every chance she gets, she is also drawn into the cutting-edge work he and his team are doing. The show, therefore, gets to have case-of-the-week episodes while exploring, in more detail than we’re used to, the science and ethics of cloning and gene therapy. As the highhanded but crafty scientist, Taneli Makela steals the show, bringing a perfectly controlled blend of intellectual disdain and deadpan humor to lines like, “You don’t want us to throw a perfectly good fetus away, do you?” “The Americans” and the “Deutschland” series set a high bar in the category of well-written, sleekly produced Cold War period dramas. Finland’s contribution to the genre, “Shadow Lines,” whose second season premiered in December on Sundance Now, is not far off in storytelling and production value. And it is distinguished by a strain of existential earnestness: The Finnish agents’ contributions to world-shaking events are taking place just down the road from the Soviet Union. Emmi Parviainen plays Helena, a college student with a murky past who joins a secret unit of the security services in 1955, when the United States and the Soviet Union are both deeply interested in the outcome of the next Finnish presidential election. The C.I.A. is determined to keep the left-leaning Urho Kekkonen (Janne Reinikainen) out of office, while the K.G.B. is working just as hard to get him in. (The real-life Kekkonen won — he served for 26 years — and he does in the show as well, setting up the second season’s story lines.) Helena’s group, known as Fist, watches, infiltrates and tries to thwart the plans of both of its much larger and better equipped intelligence rivals, and the Finns’ resourcefulness and bravery make for satisfyingly tense entertainment in this well-above-average spy drama. The action is crisp, the violence is realistic, and the costume and set designers convincingly evoke the early days of the Cold War. The three seasons of this cop show, available on Netflix, have probably done more than anything else to draw attention to Finnish TV. The third premiered on Netflix in 2020, as the pandemic was setting in, and no announcement has been made, one way or the other, about a Season 4. The main attraction of “Bordertown” is the sly performance of Ville Virtanen as Kari Sorjonen, a classic idiosyncratic but high-functioning detective in the Sherlock Holmes mode. His eyes dart and his limbs twitch as he scans a crime scene before muttering, almost defensively, an uncanny analysis of the “We’re looking for a short woman in a blue parka with a limp” variety. Most shows play this sort of thing for humor, but in “Bordertown” it’s done straight — Kari is just that good. “Bordertown” may be the best current exemplar of Scandinavian noir, and it doesn’t depart in any significant way from the norms of that genre. Kari himself is strongly reminiscent of the somewhere-on-the-spectrum detective Saga Noren in the Danish-Swedish production “The Bridge,” and Kari’s partnership with the former Russian agent Lena Jaakkola (Anu Sinisalo) recalls the pairing of Noren, a Swede, with a Danish detective. Its Finnishness is partly a matter of isolation: The show takes place in Lappeenranta, a small, isolated city near the Russian border. Kari leaves a high-profile job in Helsinki and takes his family to the woods because he wants a place with “cozy crime.” He of course finds the opposite, partly because of the proximity of Russia, and the dead bodies just keep washing up. Evidence But the show also has a modesty that may be Finnish in nature: Its violence and lurid transgressions are presented with more reserve than usual, and with less of a sense of grim satisfaction. The emotional lives of the detectives in Scandinavian dramas are often bleak, blank books, but “Bordertown” puts an honest focus on Kari’s and Lena’s families and the friendships that develop among them. There are some rays of sun among the noir. Rebuttal

nytimes\flight-attendants-covid.txt

Using custom data configuration default-763e134aa68bd061

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-763e134aa68bd061\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-763e134aa68bd061\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

It was the German shepherd in Row 4 that finally pushed Veronica, a flight attendant, over the edge. He was Veronica’s third ‘unruly passenger,’ as the Federal Aviation Administration calls them, in one month. A week or two before the dog, a middle-aged man reacted belligerently when, just before he boarded the plane, Veronica asked him to pull up his mask. ‘Who do you think you are, you liberals?!’ he screamed at her. ‘These masks don’t work.’ Then he threatened to punch her in the face. About a week before, it was a group of young female athletes. The girls kept removing their masks when they talked to one another, and Veronica, who was working the back of the plane near the girls, repeatedly reminded them: “Please put your mask on.” (She and most other attendants asked me not to use their full names, either because an airline’s media policy does not allow them to speak without permission or for fear that doing so might hinder their employment.) “Please put your mask on,” a girl mocked Veronica each time she said it. When the girl got up to go to the bathroom, without a mask, Veronica asked again. The girl, who was about 5-foot-10 and towered over Veronica’s 5-foot-2 frame, said: “I’m so sick and tired of you, bitch. You don’t have authority over me.” They were almost body to body in the cramped area near the lavatory, and Veronica feared the girl was about to hit her, before one of the coaches intervened. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9784414172172546}
Finally, the German shepherd. He was supposedly a service dog (or one in training). He whined and whimpered as he boarded, and he whined in the bulkhead row near the front of the plane where he and his owner sat. Another flight attendant asked the owner if the dog was OK. Then, during the safety demonstration, Veronica leaned into Row 4 — as she has done many times when service animals were there — to point out the exit sign. The dog lunged at her, before the owner pulled him back. Then he lunged again. His tooth went through her pantyhose and scraped and bruised her thigh. Fortunately, the plane was still on the ground: A gate agent removed the dog and owner. (Veronica later heard that the passenger and her dog got on another flight.) Veronica told a manager, who was sympathetic and concerned, sent him photos and called in sick the next day. Two weeks later, she informed her airline that she was done. She quit what had, for six years, been her dream job. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9907291531562805}
Flight attendants often love their jobs. The wages are decent for an occupation that doesn’t require a college education and that provides on-the-job training: Median pay was about $60,000 in 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with roughly 10 percent of attendants earning $85,000 or more. Attendants often have flexible schedules and little direct supervision. I spoke to about 15 flight attendants, most of whom talked about the rewards of flying: joking with passengers, having conversations with them about the honeymoon they are headed to or the funeral they returned from. Sometimes they pray with passengers or in other ways comfort them when they are in distress. They hold and rock babies to give parents a break. They also build lifelong friendships with other crew members and have jump-seat therapy, as they call it, with flight attendants they’ve just met. And they are proud of their lifesaving skills: They are trained to give CPR, fight fires onboard, help with emergency landings and evacuate planes. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9945616126060486}
The career also provides plenty of perks, which grow over time. An attendant with seniority might work just nine days a month (three three-day trips), jetting to Paris and other international destinations. Off-the-job benefits include often flying free or at little cost and getting discounts on hotels and rental cars. “I saw the world,” one recently retired flight attendant told me, “and it was the only way I could afford to do it.” On layovers, crews often gather for meals or drinks. They go to Disney World together, tour Capitol Hill, have picnics in the Jardin des Tuileries. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9896770715713501}
But pandemic anxiety, hostility and tantrums have turned airplanes into battlefronts. In some ways, it’s not so different on the ground for greeters at big-box stores, grocery employees, waiters, bus drivers and other workers whose jobs require that they remind people to comply with mask policies. They all risk being cursed out, spit at or punched. But airlines are a particular dumping ground for stress and rudeness. People are angry about wearing masks. People are angry at those who don’t wear masks. They are all tired of the long lines, packed airplanes and cancellations caused by weather and Omicron. (During the week of Jan. 2 this year, 10 percent of flights in the United States were canceled.) And if a customer spins out of control midflight, flight attendants have no escape and no way (despite what might be their secret fantasy) to eject the passenger. Instead, the attendant is required to uphold a federal mask mandate with little perceived authority — the public thinks “we are nothing more than cocktail waitresses,” one told me — and without the muscle of law enforcement. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8803168535232544}
Before the pandemic, unruly passengers — people who interfere with crew members’ jobs or intimidate, threaten or assault them — were so rare that the F.A.A. didn’t even track them annually. But in 2021 and early 2022, the F.A.A. reported a stunning 6,300 unruly-passenger incidents — more than 4,500 of them mask-related. And 85 percent of flight attendants said they had dealt with such passengers last year, according to a July 2021 survey by the Association of Flight Attendants-C.W.A., which represents attendants at 17 airlines. Fifty-eight percent said they had experienced at least five occurrences. (Sixty-one percent of the flight attendants also said that passengers used sexist, racist and/or homophobic slurs.) And 17 percent reported physical incidents. They described passengers shoving and hitting them, kicking seats, throwing trash at them. When a Frontier Airlines flight attendant duct taped a drunken man to his seat last August, it was after he allegedly groped the breasts of two female flight attendants and punched a male flight attendant who intervened. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9939956068992615}
It doesn’t help that people are also drinking a lot. Since January of last year, the F.A.A. has received more than 300 reports of passenger disturbances related to alcohol. And, so far, the agency has levied more than $161,000 in civil penalties for alleged unruly behavior involving booze. Airport vendors promoting to-go liquor — a pandemic phenomenon — are partly to blame. One flight attendant told me about a woman who tried to board with a beer when a gate agent told her to throw it away. On the plane, she drunkenly swayed back and forth and then popped open a 16-ounce Corona, claiming the agent said that was OK. (The crew removed her from the flight.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9904381632804871}
Other passengers’ bad behavior reflects a time of receding civility. Like the man who argued with attendants when they told his son to stop vaping. As he was escorted off the plane, he yelled at a flight attendant, “Imagine all of you in body bags.” Or the man who dumped a diaper filled with poop in the beverage cart, ending service for the rest of the flight. “The bathroom was three feet away,” Roger, a flight attendant who asked me to use a nickname that his friends call him, told me. “There was only one family with a baby on the plane, so we asked him. The dad admitted to it, but he never apologized.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9940383434295654}
But mask-defiers create the most problems, and the greatest risks, for flight crews. An attendant with 25 years of airline experience told me about a passenger who repeatedly refused to put a mask on her young daughter. When she deplaned, after the flight attendant said, “Have a good night,” the woman looked her in the eyes and tossed a crumpled mask in her face. Last month, on a Delta flight from Dublin to New York City, a 29-year-old man repeatedly refused to wear a mask, pulled down his pants and exposed his butt, threw a can at a passenger and put his own cap on and off the pilot’s head when the pilot walked through the cabin, according to the F.B.I. Then the man made a fist and said to the pilot, “Don’t touch me.” Several months earlier, after a Southwest flight attendant asked a woman to buckle her seatbelt, put up her tray table and wear her mask over her nose, the woman stood up and repeatedly punched the attendant, drawing blood and chipping three of her teeth. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.801776111125946}
The threats are great enough that Roger, who has been flying for seven years, now avoids working as a lead attendant: The risk and responsibility aren’t worth it. Another attendant who asked me to use his middle name, Wilson, said he won’t sign up for jobs where he would be the sole attendant on smaller planes, like the 50-seater he worked last year when a passenger who was about 6-foot-3 and 200 pounds refused to put on a mask. When Wilson approached him, the man stood up and put his arms and hands out, essentially saying back off. Wilson was stuck 30,000 feet in the air with only pilots behind bulletproof doors to back him up. He reported the incident to the pilot, but when everyone disembarked, the passenger just walked away. “I’m getting all these emails from the airline saying we support you, and then I just felt alone and deflated,” he said. “I’m stuck in a tin can with this guy. It’s not like I can run. I knew he could whale the snot out of me.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9824879765510559}
Roger said he has filed more than 30 complaints about unruly passengers and never received a response from the airline. The same with another flight attendant who told me that she has filed 100 reports. In the union’s survey of attendants last year, 71 percent said they received no follow-up from their airlines after filing incident reports, and a majority saw no efforts to address passenger conduct. The Association of Flight Attendants-C.W.A. has called on airlines to improve communications with flight attendants. “Airlines are doing a decent job of forwarding complaints to the F.A.A. for investigations,” Taylor Garland, a spokeswoman for the union, said. “But there’s not a feedback loop with flight attendants.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.986088216304779}
When I reached out to several airlines about the issue, they either didn’t address it directly or said they review reports and follow up with the crew member or their flight leader. Some flight attendants told me that these days they either file reports only sporadically or have stopped doing it entirely. They are not only tired but also usually have to file reports during nonworking hours — and they aren’t convinced it makes a difference. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9840213656425476}
Flight attendants feel isolated in other ways too. “It used to be that I’d get off a flight in D.C., change out of my uniform, call an Uber and walk around the National Mall and Smithsonian,” Roger told me. “Now I go to the hotel room, order takeout, turn on the TV. I haven’t gone out for a meal with crew for a long time.” He has become, as he says, a “slam clicker.” Those are the crew members who, after the flying day is done, go to the hotel, close the door behind them, click the lock and come out only when the workday starts again. They used to be in the minority, but now flight crews are full of them, either because of their fears of Covid or just exhaustion. And in some cases, they have no choice. In Tokyo and Seoul, prime destinations for senior attendants, flight crews now can’t leave their hotel rooms at all because of national pandemic rules, except for traveling to and from the airport. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9908024072647095}
I talked to one attendant in January who called in sick because he was burned out after more than a week of 4 a.m. alarms and 14-hour days. Several months earlier he got stuck in Chicago overnight after multiple schedule changes because of delays and last-minute staff shortages. He was stranded in an airport lounge until 3:30 a.m. when his airline found an empty hotel room for him. (He had to wake up at 6 a.m. for a flight home.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9941123127937317}
“How much more do they expect for us to take?” Nas Lewis, a flight attendant, said. “We are at our wits’ end.” Last year, when a late-arriving passenger got on an overbooked flight, Lewis, who has flown for seven years, scouted for a possible seat for her. When Lewis found nothing, the passenger yelled at her and shoved her. Lewis didn’t report the incident. “The day was long enough,” she said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9591071009635925}
In December, partly in response to her own experiences, as well as what she was hearing from others, Lewis started a texting hotline for distressed flight attendants. The service, which is part of her nonprofit, th|AIR|apy, is staffed by 30 volunteer attendants who have gone through 15 to 30 hours of training on issues like depression, suicide and drug abuse and who provide resources to help. The first text she got was from an attendant who felt suicidal and was worn down by her schedule. There have been 3,000 messages to date, most of which, Lewis says, are about experiences of despair, thoughts of quitting, aggressive incidents on the flights and feeling unsupported by airlines. “We are getting messages all hours of the night,” she said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9887425899505615}
Since the pandemic began, attendants are also turning in greater numbers to the Association of Flight Attendants-C.W.A.’s Employee Assistant Program, which provides help and resources for drug dependence, emotional issues, workplace trauma, financial problems and harassment. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5700539350509644}
Sara Nelson, the head of the union, testified before Congress in December, saying flight crews were “punching bags” and, among other things, called on the government to create a centralized list of banned passengers for all airlines. The F.A.A., meanwhile, has begun issuing harsher penalties for unruly passengers and investigated more than 1,100 cases in 2021 — compared with about 150 in previous years — and the government has started hundreds of enforcement actions. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9887337684631348}
Veronica, like many others, hopes that if the pandemic recedes and the government lifts the mask mandate (which could occur as soon as March 18, but is not certain), the violence and verbal assaults will decline. If that happens, she would like to return to the skies. In the meantime, she has taken her 3-year-old daughter out of day care and is a full-time mother. There’s nothing like flying. But for now, “instead of dealing with 72 toddlers,” Veronica said, “I’m taking care of one.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8889957070350647}

It was the German shepherd in Row 4 that finally pushed Veronica, a flight attendant, over the edge. He was Veronica’s third ‘unruly passenger,’ as the Federal Aviation Administration calls them, in one month. A week or two before the dog, a middle-aged man reacted belligerently when, just before he boarded the plane, Veronica asked him to pull up his mask. ‘Who do you think you are, you liberals?!’ he screamed at her. ‘These masks don’t work.’ Then he threatened to punch her in the face. About a week before, it was a group of young female athletes. The girls kept removing their masks when they talked to one another, and Veronica, who was working the back of the plane near the girls, repeatedly reminded them: “Please put your mask on.” (She and most other attendants asked me not to use their full names, either because an airline’s media policy does not allow them to speak without permission or for fear that doing so might hinder their employment.) “Please put your mask on,” a girl mocked Veronica each time she said it. When the girl got up to go to the bathroom, without a mask, Veronica asked again. The girl, who was about 5-foot-10 and towered over Veronica’s 5-foot-2 frame, said: “I’m so sick and tired of you, bitch. You don’t have authority over me.” They were almost body to body in the cramped area near the lavatory, and Veronica feared the girl was about to hit her, before one of the coaches intervened. Finally, the German shepherd. He was supposedly a service dog (or one in training). He whined and whimpered as he boarded, and he whined in the bulkhead row near the front of the plane where he and his owner sat. Another flight attendant asked the owner if the dog was OK. Then, during the safety demonstration, Veronica leaned into Row 4 — as she has done many times when service animals were there — to point out the exit sign. The dog lunged at her, before the owner pulled him back. Then he lunged again. His tooth went through her pantyhose and scraped and bruised her thigh. Fortunately, the plane was still on the ground: A gate agent removed the dog and owner. (Veronica later heard that the passenger and her dog got on another flight.) Veronica told a manager, who was sympathetic and concerned, sent him photos and called in sick the next day. Two weeks later, she informed her airline that she was done. She quit what had, for six years, been her dream job. Flight attendants often love their jobs. The wages are decent for an occupation that doesn’t require a college education and that provides on-the-job training: Median pay was about $60,000 in 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with roughly 10 percent of attendants earning $85,000 or more. Attendants often have flexible schedules and little direct supervision. I spoke to about 15 flight attendants, most of whom talked about the rewards of flying: joking with passengers, having conversations with them about the honeymoon they are headed to or the funeral they returned from. Sometimes they pray with passengers or in other ways comfort them when they are in distress. They hold and rock babies to give parents a break. They also build lifelong friendships with other crew members and have jump-seat therapy, as they call it, with flight attendants they’ve just met. And they are proud of their lifesaving skills: They are trained to give CPR, fight fires onboard, help with emergency landings and evacuate planes. The career also provides plenty of perks, which grow over time. An attendant with seniority might work just nine days a month (three three-day trips), jetting to Paris and other international destinations. Off-the-job benefits include often flying free or at little cost and getting discounts on hotels and rental cars. “I saw the world,” one recently retired flight attendant told me, “and it was the only way I could afford to do it.” On layovers, crews often gather for meals or drinks. They go to Disney World together, tour Capitol Hill, have picnics in the Jardin des Tuileries. But pandemic anxiety, hostility and tantrums have turned airplanes into battlefronts. In some ways, it’s not so different on the ground for greeters at big-box stores, grocery employees, waiters, bus drivers and other workers whose jobs require that they remind people to comply with mask policies. They all risk being cursed out, spit at or punched. But airlines are a particular dumping ground for stress and rudeness. People are angry about wearing masks. People are angry at those who don’t wear masks. They are all tired of the long lines, packed airplanes and cancellations caused by weather and Omicron. (During the week of Jan. 2 this year, 10 percent of flights in the United States were canceled.) And if a customer spins out of control midflight, flight attendants have no escape and no way (despite what might be their secret fantasy) to eject the passenger. Instead, the attendant is required to uphold a federal mask mandate with little perceived authority — the public thinks “we are nothing more than cocktail waitresses,” one told me — and without the muscle of law enforcement. Before the pandemic, unruly passengers — people who interfere with crew members’ jobs or intimidate, threaten or assault them — were so rare that the F.A.A. didn’t even track them annually. But in 2021 and early 2022, the F.A.A. reported a stunning 6,300 unruly-passenger incidents — more than 4,500 of them mask-related. And 85 percent of flight attendants said they had dealt with such passengers last year, according to a July 2021 survey by the Association of Flight Attendants-C.W.A., which represents attendants at 17 airlines. Fifty-eight percent said they had experienced at least five occurrences. (Sixty-one percent of the flight attendants also said that passengers used sexist, racist and/or homophobic slurs.) And 17 percent reported physical incidents. They described passengers shoving and hitting them, kicking seats, throwing trash at them. When a Frontier Airlines flight attendant duct taped a drunken man to his seat last August, it was after he allegedly groped the breasts of two female flight attendants and punched a male flight attendant who intervened. It doesn’t help that people are also drinking a lot. Since January of last year, the F.A.A. has received more than 300 reports of passenger disturbances related to alcohol. And, so far, the agency has levied more than $161,000 in civil penalties for alleged unruly behavior involving booze. Airport vendors promoting to-go liquor — a pandemic phenomenon — are partly to blame. One flight attendant told me about a woman who tried to board with a beer when a gate agent told her to throw it away. On the plane, she drunkenly swayed back and forth and then popped open a 16-ounce Corona, claiming the agent said that was OK. (The crew removed her from the flight.) Other passengers’ bad behavior reflects a time of receding civility. Like the man who argued with attendants when they told his son to stop vaping. As he was escorted off the plane, he yelled at a flight attendant, “Imagine all of you in body bags.” Or the man who dumped a diaper filled with poop in the beverage cart, ending service for the rest of the flight. “The bathroom was three feet away,” Roger, a flight attendant who asked me to use a nickname that his friends call him, told me. “There was only one family with a baby on the plane, so we asked him. The dad admitted to it, but he never apologized.” But mask-defiers create the most problems, and the greatest risks, for flight crews. An attendant with 25 years of airline experience told me about a passenger who repeatedly refused to put a mask on her young daughter. When she deplaned, after the flight attendant said, “Have a good night,” the woman looked her in the eyes and tossed a crumpled mask in her face. Last month, on a Delta flight from Dublin to New York City, a 29-year-old man repeatedly refused to wear a mask, pulled down his pants and exposed his butt, threw a can at a passenger and put his own cap on and off the pilot’s head when the pilot walked through the cabin, according to the F.B.I. Then the man made a fist and said to the pilot, “Don’t touch me.” Several months earlier, after a Southwest flight attendant asked a woman to buckle her seatbelt, put up her tray table and wear her mask over her nose, the woman stood up and repeatedly punched the attendant, drawing blood and chipping three of her teeth. The threats are great enough that Roger, who has been flying for seven years, now avoids working as a lead attendant: The risk and responsibility aren’t worth it. Another attendant who asked me to use his middle name, Wilson, said he won’t sign up for jobs where he would be the sole attendant on smaller planes, like the 50-seater he worked last year when a passenger who was about 6-foot-3 and 200 pounds refused to put on a mask. When Wilson approached him, the man stood up and put his arms and hands out, essentially saying back off. Wilson was stuck 30,000 feet in the air with only pilots behind bulletproof doors to back him up. He reported the incident to the pilot, but when everyone disembarked, the passenger just walked away. “I’m getting all these emails from the airline saying we support you, and then I just felt alone and deflated,” he said. “I’m stuck in a tin can with this guy. It’s not like I can run. I knew he could whale the snot out of me.” Roger said he has filed more than 30 complaints about unruly passengers and never received a response from the airline. The same with another flight attendant who told me that she has filed 100 reports. In the union’s survey of attendants last year, 71 percent said they received no follow-up from their airlines after filing incident reports, and a majority saw no efforts to address passenger conduct. The Association of Flight Attendants-C.W.A. has called on airlines to improve communications with flight attendants. “Airlines are doing a decent job of forwarding complaints to the F.A.A. for investigations,” Taylor Garland, a spokeswoman for the union, said. “But there’s not a feedback loop with flight attendants.” When I reached out to several airlines about the issue, they either didn’t address it directly or said they review reports and follow up with the crew member or their flight leader. Some flight attendants told me that these days they either file reports only sporadically or have stopped doing it entirely. They are not only tired but also usually have to file reports during nonworking hours — and they aren’t convinced it makes a difference. Flight attendants feel isolated in other ways too. “It used to be that I’d get off a flight in D.C., change out of my uniform, call an Uber and walk around the National Mall and Smithsonian,” Roger told me. “Now I go to the hotel room, order takeout, turn on the TV. I haven’t gone out for a meal with crew for a long time.” He has become, as he says, a “slam clicker.” Those are the crew members who, after the flying day is done, go to the hotel, close the door behind them, click the lock and come out only when the workday starts again. They used to be in the minority, but now flight crews are full of them, either because of their fears of Covid or just exhaustion. And in some cases, they have no choice. In Tokyo and Seoul, prime destinations for senior attendants, flight crews now can’t leave their hotel rooms at all because of national pandemic rules, except for traveling to and from the airport. I talked to one attendant in January who called in sick because he was burned out after more than a week of 4 a.m. alarms and 14-hour days. Several months earlier he got stuck in Chicago overnight after multiple schedule changes because of delays and last-minute staff shortages. He was stranded in an airport lounge until 3:30 a.m. when his airline found an empty hotel room for him. (He had to wake up at 6 a.m. for a flight home.) “How much more do they expect for us to take?” Nas Lewis, a flight attendant, said. “We are at our wits’ end.” Last year, when a late-arriving passenger got on an overbooked flight, Lewis, who has flown for seven years, scouted for a possible seat for her. When Lewis found nothing, the passenger yelled at her and shoved her. Lewis didn’t report the incident. “The day was long enough,” she said. In December, partly in response to her own experiences, as well as what she was hearing from others, Lewis started a texting hotline for distressed flight attendants. The service, which is part of her nonprofit, th|AIR|apy, is staffed by 30 volunteer attendants who have gone through 15 to 30 hours of training on issues like depression, suicide and drug abuse and who provide resources to help. The first text she got was from an attendant who felt suicidal and was worn down by her schedule. There have been 3,000 messages to date, most of which, Lewis says, are about experiences of despair, thoughts of quitting, aggressive incidents on the flights and feeling unsupported by airlines. “We are getting messages all hours of the night,” she said. Since the pandemic began, attendants are also turning in greater numbers to the Association of Flight Attendants-C.W.A.’s Employee Assistant Program, which provides help and resources for drug dependence, emotional issues, workplace trauma, financial problems and harassment. Sara Nelson, the head of the union, testified before Congress in December, saying flight crews were “punching bags” and, among other things, called on the government to create a centralized list of banned passengers for all airlines. The F.A.A., meanwhile, has begun issuing harsher penalties for unruly passengers and investigated more than 1,100 cases in 2021 — compared with about 150 in previous years — and the government has started hundreds of enforcement actions. Veronica, like many others, hopes that if the pandemic recedes and the government lifts the mask mandate (which could occur as soon as March 18, but is not certain), the violence and verbal assaults will decline. If that happens, she would like to return to the skies. In the meantime, she has taken her 3-year-old daughter out of day care and is a full-time mother. There’s nothing like flying. But for now, “instead of dealing with 72 toddlers,” Veronica said, “I’m taking care of one.” Evidence

nytimes\focus-johann-hari.txt

Using custom data configuration default-734e0fd9ed573990

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-734e0fd9ed573990\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-734e0fd9ed573990\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

The typical American worker focuses on a given task for just three minutes. Each day, we touch or check our phones more than 2,000 times, and spend more than three hours staring at them, on average. So says Johann Hari, an author who has previously written about depression and addiction, in his new book “Stolen Focus.” It is an investigation into how we got ourselves into this distracted state — what Mr. Hari describes as an “attention crisis.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9880155920982361}
Some factors that Mr. Hari identifies seem straightforward, like the current business model of Big Tech, which makes money in direct proportion to the attention people give it. Other factors he unearths are less commonly discussed, from what we eat (highly processed food, filled with refined carbohydrates) and how we sleep (by some accounts, less than we used to) to the nature of American childhood, with its widespread loss of autonomy. Mr. Hari calls for an “attention rebellion,” a drastic collective action to force major changes, such as instituting a four-day workweek and letting children have much more unsupervised free play. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9355558156967163}
Here, condensed and edited for clarity, is a recent conversation with Mr. Hari about what it will take to reclaim our minds. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.409519761800766}
Do you see a connection between the topics of your three books: depression, addiction and attention? {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.853724479675293}
J.H.: There’s always a mystery in my head that I genuinely want to investigate. With this book, I could feel my own attention getting worse. Things that required deep focus, that were core to my sense of self, like reading books and having deep conversations, were getting more and more like running up a down escalator. I could still do them, but they were getting harder. And I could see this happening to most people I knew. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7607913017272949}
I also think there’s a deeper connection. With each of these phenomena — depression, addiction and our attention crisis — we think of them as primarily individual problems and individual flaws. But these are phenomena that are occurring within an environment. As Dr. Joel Nigg, a psychiatry professor who is one of the leading experts on children’s attention problems, put it to me, we need to ask if we are facing what he called an “attentional pathogenic culture,” a culture that is undermining the ability of most of us to focus. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.920046865940094}
What about the pandemic? How have the events of these past two years contributed to our fractured sense of focus? {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7288021445274353}
J.H.: It has made us more stressed, and we know that stress triggers a state called vigilance — and vigilance is where you find it harder to focus because your brain is scanning the horizon for danger. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4827817976474762}
The other thing is it’s given us this dystopian vision of the future. Naomi Klein argues that we suddenly got slammed forward to where we would have been in 15 years time with regard to technology. It has shown us a vision of the future that many of us hate. In the last two years, I have not once heard the phrase, “Hooray, another Zoom call!” So it’s given us a vision of the future we are moving toward that we can now consciously choose to abandon and move toward a much better future. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9744752049446106}
On that subject: There are those, like the writer and tech expert Nir Eyal, who say we need to be individually accountable for our own discipline around screen time, rather than blame technology for our distractibility. You call this “cruel optimism,” which you define as a solution that sounds good, but won’t work. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4329398572444916}
J.H.: At the start of the research for the book, I had essentially two stories for what had happened to me. I thought: “One, you’re lacking willpower. And two, someone invented the smartphone.” I decided to exert my willpower, and I went away without my smartphone for three months. I spent three months in Provincetown, Mass., completely offline, in a radical act of will. There were many ups and downs, but I was stunned by how much my attention came back. I could read books for eight hours a day. At the end of my time there, I thought, “I’m never going to go back to how I lived before.” The pleasures of focus are so much greater than the rewards of likes and retweets. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.933443009853363}
Then I got my phone back, and within a few months, I was 80 percent back to where I had been. I only really understood why when I interviewed James Williams, who I would argue is the leading philosopher on attention in the world now, and he said to me, “It’s like you thought the solution to air pollution was for you personally to wear a gas mask.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.947334349155426}
I’m not against gas masks. Gas masks are great. But they’re not the solution for air pollution. {'label': 'Position', 'score': 0.7296524047851562}
If quitting technology for a sustained period of time isn’t the answer, what were some of the techniques you found effective on an individual level? {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7029162645339966}
J.H.: I sleep more, for at least eight hours. I have a time-locking container, which I put my phone in for four hours a day when I write. And I won’t sit down and watch a movie with my boyfriend unless we both lock away our phones. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9647217988967896}
There are people who argue that worrying about the influence of Big Tech on our attention is just the latest moral panic, akin to the outrage that greeted the printing press. How do you respond when you hear that argument? {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.9462006688117981}
I used to believe that this was the case. But I think the evidence is really overwhelming — and I think most people can see it. It’s also urgent because many of the factors that are invading our attention are poised to hugely accelerate. Think about how much more addictive TikTok is than Facebook. There has to be a movement on the other side, of all of us who say: “No, you don’t get to do this to us. We want to have a life where we can think deeply. We want to have a life where we can read books. We want to have a life where our children can hold conversations.” {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.8307421207427979}
To that point, the diagnosis of A.D.H.D. has soared since the beginning of this century. Roughly six million American children are now diagnosed with it. But you unearthed ambiguity on this subject — researchers don’t agree on whether A.D.H.D. is a strictly “biological illness.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6904053688049316}
J.H.: Of all the topics in the book, this was the one where the scientists I interviewed disagreed the most. The evidence is fairly clear that there are some people whose genes make them somewhat more vulnerable to attention problems. However, the extent to which those attention problems are driven by biology has been somewhat overstated. This is the first human society ever that has tried to get kids to sit still for eight hours a day. No one has ever done that before because it’s an absolutely idiotic thing to do. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9087831377983093}
So, I think the diagnosis of A.D.H.D. can be good because it tells children, “This is not your fault.” But I think it’s harmful to give them an exclusively biological story, saying, “This is just a problem in your brain.” {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.7980453372001648}
Your solution to all of this is to start an “attention rebellion.” What does that look like? {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.572471559047699}
J.H.: The first step is consciousness raising. It’s everyone coming together and saying: You think you’re failing because you can’t focus, and actually it’s happening to all of us and it’s happening for big structural reasons. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.47354334592819214}

The typical American worker focuses on a given task for just three minutes. Each day, we touch or check our phones more than 2,000 times, and spend more than three hours staring at them, on average. So says Johann Hari, an author who has previously written about depression and addiction, in his new book “Stolen Focus.” It is an investigation into how we got ourselves into this distracted state — what Mr. Hari describes as an “attention crisis.” Some factors that Mr. Hari identifies seem straightforward, like the current business model of Big Tech, which makes money in direct proportion to the attention people give it. Other factors he unearths are less commonly discussed, from what we eat (highly processed food, filled with refined carbohydrates) and how we sleep (by some accounts, less than we used to) to the nature of American childhood, with its widespread loss of autonomy. Mr. Hari calls for an “attention rebellion,” a drastic collective action to force major changes, such as instituting a four-day workweek and letting children have much more unsupervised free play. Evidence Here, condensed and edited for clarity, is a recent conversation with Mr. Hari about what it will take to reclaim our minds. Claim Do you see a connection between the topics of your three books: depression, addiction and attention? Lead J.H.: There’s always a mystery in my head that I genuinely want to investigate. With this book, I could feel my own attention getting worse. Things that required deep focus, that were core to my sense of self, like reading books and having deep conversations, were getting more and more like running up a down escalator. I could still do them, but they were getting harder. And I could see this happening to most people I knew. I also think there’s a deeper connection. With each of these phenomena — depression, addiction and our attention crisis — we think of them as primarily individual problems and individual flaws. But these are phenomena that are occurring within an environment. As Dr. Joel Nigg, a psychiatry professor who is one of the leading experts on children’s attention problems, put it to me, we need to ask if we are facing what he called an “attentional pathogenic culture,” a culture that is undermining the ability of most of us to focus. Evidence What about the pandemic? How have the events of these past two years contributed to our fractured sense of focus? J.H.: It has made us more stressed, and we know that stress triggers a state called vigilance — and vigilance is where you find it harder to focus because your brain is scanning the horizon for danger. Claim The other thing is it’s given us this dystopian vision of the future. Naomi Klein argues that we suddenly got slammed forward to where we would have been in 15 years time with regard to technology. It has shown us a vision of the future that many of us hate. In the last two years, I have not once heard the phrase, “Hooray, another Zoom call!” So it’s given us a vision of the future we are moving toward that we can now consciously choose to abandon and move toward a much better future. On that subject: There are those, like the writer and tech expert Nir Eyal, who say we need to be individually accountable for our own discipline around screen time, rather than blame technology for our distractibility. You call this “cruel optimism,” which you define as a solution that sounds good, but won’t work. J.H.: At the start of the research for the book, I had essentially two stories for what had happened to me. I thought: “One, you’re lacking willpower. And two, someone invented the smartphone.” I decided to exert my willpower, and I went away without my smartphone for three months. I spent three months in Provincetown, Mass., completely offline, in a radical act of will. There were many ups and downs, but I was stunned by how much my attention came back. I could read books for eight hours a day. At the end of my time there, I thought, “I’m never going to go back to how I lived before.” The pleasures of focus are so much greater than the rewards of likes and retweets. Then I got my phone back, and within a few months, I was 80 percent back to where I had been. I only really understood why when I interviewed James Williams, who I would argue is the leading philosopher on attention in the world now, and he said to me, “It’s like you thought the solution to air pollution was for you personally to wear a gas mask.” Evidence I’m not against gas masks. Gas masks are great. But they’re not the solution for air pollution. Position If quitting technology for a sustained period of time isn’t the answer, what were some of the techniques you found effective on an individual level? Claim J.H.: I sleep more, for at least eight hours. I have a time-locking container, which I put my phone in for four hours a day when I write. And I won’t sit down and watch a movie with my boyfriend unless we both lock away our phones. Evidence There are people who argue that worrying about the influence of Big Tech on our attention is just the latest moral panic, akin to the outrage that greeted the printing press. How do you respond when you hear that argument? Counterclaim I used to believe that this was the case. But I think the evidence is really overwhelming — and I think most people can see it. It’s also urgent because many of the factors that are invading our attention are poised to hugely accelerate. Think about how much more addictive TikTok is than Facebook. There has to be a movement on the other side, of all of us who say: “No, you don’t get to do this to us. We want to have a life where we can think deeply. We want to have a life where we can read books. We want to have a life where our children can hold conversations.” Concluding Statement To that point, the diagnosis of A.D.H.D. has soared since the beginning of this century. Roughly six million American children are now diagnosed with it. But you unearthed ambiguity on this subject — researchers don’t agree on whether A.D.H.D. is a strictly “biological illness.” J.H.: Of all the topics in the book, this was the one where the scientists I interviewed disagreed the most. The evidence is fairly clear that there are some people whose genes make them somewhat more vulnerable to attention problems. However, the extent to which those attention problems are driven by biology has been somewhat overstated. This is the first human society ever that has tried to get kids to sit still for eight hours a day. No one has ever done that before because it’s an absolutely idiotic thing to do. Evidence So, I think the diagnosis of A.D.H.D. can be good because it tells children, “This is not your fault.” But I think it’s harmful to give them an exclusively biological story, saying, “This is just a problem in your brain.” Concluding Statement Your solution to all of this is to start an “attention rebellion.” What does that look like? J.H.: The first step is consciousness raising. It’s everyone coming together and saying: You think you’re failing because you can’t focus, and actually it’s happening to all of us and it’s happening for big structural reasons. Claim

nytimes\food-english-foreign-languages.txt

Using custom data configuration default-62991eba72ac6d9a

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-62991eba72ac6d9a\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-62991eba72ac6d9a\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

In pre-Covid times, Sundays at our Bangalore home were for biriyani with family and friends. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4823046028614044}
One Sunday, I received the verdict on my first attempt at my mother’s famed recipe. Everyone loved it but said that it lacked her “kai guna.” The phrase is from Kannada, the language of the South Indian state of Karnataka. It refers to the quality of the hand of a creator, or, in this case, the cook. There are variations of this word across South Indian languages that refer to the intangible uniqueness that people bring to something they have created. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.6066861152648926}
While my family’s sentiments were understandable, this led me to think about whether the English language contained its own expressive words that encapsulated entire concepts about food. Was there a word like the Japanese “kuchinaoshi,” which translates to “mouth fix,” a way to describe eating something tasty to “fix” the bad taste in your mouth from something else? What about the Swedish idea of “lagom,” which means “not too much, not too little”? It’s a way of expressing the need for balance in life, even when it comes to eating. In Spanish, there’s “sobremesa,” which captures the idea of lingering at the table long after a meal is finished and enjoying one another’s company. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9726880788803101}
Cornelia Gerhardt, an English linguist at Saarland University in Germany and one of the founders of culinary linguistics, a field concerned with the ties between language and food, believes that English is a language that does not like to pack too much information into one word. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3807554543018341}
“English is analytical, using a series of words to explain an idea,” Dr. Gerhardt said, “unlike polysynthetic languages (where entire concepts are reduced to a single word) or agglutinative languages (where suffixes and prefixes are added to a root word to create new words).” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7986335754394531}
The Norwegian word “utepils,” for example, is a noun that translates to “outside beer,” or the experience of having a beer outside on a sunny day. The literal meaning is easily understood in English. But to truly grasp its cultural context, one would need to understand that Norway is dark and cold for most of the year and, even in warmer weather, it can be rainy and overcast. So sitting outside with a beer on a sunny day is a rare pleasure. And all of that is encapsulated neatly into a single word. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9944013953208923}
Peggy Mohan, a linguist and visiting professor at Ashoka University in Delhi, said via email that many languages had “cryptic terms,” words whose meanings are difficult for nonnative speakers to grasp. Many of these are food words, she said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8269836902618408}
“Such words get invented easily, and there is even a sense of fun and humor in creating these little tokens of an existence shared by a small community and obscure to outsiders,” she said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5990249514579773}
But “English, especially American English, is in no way a ‘minority’ language in this global age,” Ms. Mohan continued. “It is a language that expects to have nonnative speakers, so it needs to be accessible. Cryptic terms would go against this need to engage and speak for the global community.” {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.5847858190536499}
But does that mean that English has not developed socially or culturally deep-rooted words about food of its own? {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8637757301330566}
Dr. Anthony F. Buccini, an independent scholar in historical linguistics and food history, believes that, in some ways, it has. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.4185265004634857}
“The quality of food discourse in a culture will affect the degree to which they come up with these interesting, peculiar, untranslatable words,” Dr. Buccini said in a phone interview. “And I think English has a lot of them.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7869349718093872}
“A pizza parlor, for me, growing up in New Jersey, has to have certain associations,” Dr. Buccini said. “Italian family-owned. The furnishing was of a certain type. Other food items besides pizzas were a certain type — baked clams, mussels in tomato sauce.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9600326418876648}
There are also compounds such as “pub crawl,” a group of people roaming from one bar to another, almost always drinking excessively, he added in a statement that has been paraphrased. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6214050650596619}
So while English may not have a single word that describes sitting outside on a sunny day while enjoying a beer, it has some lovely terms for culturally specific food concepts. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3865904211997986}
Ruth Dsouza Prabhu is an independent features journalist based in Bangalore, India. She has been published in Al Jazeera, Whetstone SA, The National, Good Beer Hunting and other publications in India. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.46375489234924316}
Join us here to solve Crosswords, The Mini and other games by The New York Times. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3548550307750702}

In pre-Covid times, Sundays at our Bangalore home were for biriyani with family and friends. Claim One Sunday, I received the verdict on my first attempt at my mother’s famed recipe. Everyone loved it but said that it lacked her “kai guna.” The phrase is from Kannada, the language of the South Indian state of Karnataka. It refers to the quality of the hand of a creator, or, in this case, the cook. There are variations of this word across South Indian languages that refer to the intangible uniqueness that people bring to something they have created. Lead While my family’s sentiments were understandable, this led me to think about whether the English language contained its own expressive words that encapsulated entire concepts about food. Was there a word like the Japanese “kuchinaoshi,” which translates to “mouth fix,” a way to describe eating something tasty to “fix” the bad taste in your mouth from something else? What about the Swedish idea of “lagom,” which means “not too much, not too little”? It’s a way of expressing the need for balance in life, even when it comes to eating. In Spanish, there’s “sobremesa,” which captures the idea of lingering at the table long after a meal is finished and enjoying one another’s company. Cornelia Gerhardt, an English linguist at Saarland University in Germany and one of the founders of culinary linguistics, a field concerned with the ties between language and food, believes that English is a language that does not like to pack too much information into one word. “English is analytical, using a series of words to explain an idea,” Dr. Gerhardt said, “unlike polysynthetic languages (where entire concepts are reduced to a single word) or agglutinative languages (where suffixes and prefixes are added to a root word to create new words).” The Norwegian word “utepils,” for example, is a noun that translates to “outside beer,” or the experience of having a beer outside on a sunny day. The literal meaning is easily understood in English. But to truly grasp its cultural context, one would need to understand that Norway is dark and cold for most of the year and, even in warmer weather, it can be rainy and overcast. So sitting outside with a beer on a sunny day is a rare pleasure. And all of that is encapsulated neatly into a single word. Peggy Mohan, a linguist and visiting professor at Ashoka University in Delhi, said via email that many languages had “cryptic terms,” words whose meanings are difficult for nonnative speakers to grasp. Many of these are food words, she said. “Such words get invented easily, and there is even a sense of fun and humor in creating these little tokens of an existence shared by a small community and obscure to outsiders,” she said. Evidence But “English, especially American English, is in no way a ‘minority’ language in this global age,” Ms. Mohan continued. “It is a language that expects to have nonnative speakers, so it needs to be accessible. Cryptic terms would go against this need to engage and speak for the global community.” But does that mean that English has not developed socially or culturally deep-rooted words about food of its own? Rebuttal Dr. Anthony F. Buccini, an independent scholar in historical linguistics and food history, believes that, in some ways, it has. Counterclaim “The quality of food discourse in a culture will affect the degree to which they come up with these interesting, peculiar, untranslatable words,” Dr. Buccini said in a phone interview. “And I think English has a lot of them.” “A pizza parlor, for me, growing up in New Jersey, has to have certain associations,” Dr. Buccini said. “Italian family-owned. The furnishing was of a certain type. Other food items besides pizzas were a certain type — baked clams, mussels in tomato sauce.” There are also compounds such as “pub crawl,” a group of people roaming from one bar to another, almost always drinking excessively, he added in a statement that has been paraphrased. So while English may not have a single word that describes sitting outside on a sunny day while enjoying a beer, it has some lovely terms for culturally specific food concepts. Ruth Dsouza Prabhu is an independent features journalist based in Bangalore, India. She has been published in Al Jazeera, Whetstone SA, The National, Good Beer Hunting and other publications in India. Evidence Join us here to solve Crosswords, The Mini and other games by The New York Times. Claim

nytimes\fourth-dose-covid-vaccine.txt

Using custom data configuration default-c7dced11643524ca

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-c7dced11643524ca\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-c7dced11643524ca\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

WASHINGTON — Although new federal data suggests that the effectiveness of booster shots wanes after about four months, the Biden administration is not planning to recommend fourth doses of the coronavirus vaccine anytime soon. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.38389381766319275}
“We simply don’t have enough data to know that it’s a good thing to do,” Dr. Peter Marks, who heads the division of the Food and Drug Administration that regulates vaccines, said in an interview this week. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5516361594200134}
In a separate interview, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the chief medical adviser to the White House, said the vaccines are still a firm bulwark against severe illness, despite data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing that booster shots lose some of their potency after four to five months. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8193473815917969}
The C.D.C.’s research, released last Friday, analyzed hospitalizations and visits to emergency rooms and urgent care clinics in 10 states by people who had had booster shots of either Moderna’s or Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine. The study showed the level of protection against hospitalization fell from 91 percent in the two months after a third shot to 78 percent after four to five months. Effectiveness against visits to emergency rooms or urgent care clinics declined from 87 percent to 66 percent. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9919946193695068}
The data came with major caveats: Researchers did not examine variations by age group, underlying medical conditions or the presence of immune deficiencies. Still, they said, the findings underscored the possible importance of a fourth shot. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.3368087410926819}
“‘Should I get a fourth shot?’ That’s what a lot of people are asking me,” Dr. Fauci said. “The answer is if you look at where we are now, it looks like it’s good protection. Seventy-eight percent is good.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4527958035469055}
The administration’s vaccine strategy has been under constant review since President Biden took office. What comes next, Dr. Fauci said, will depend on whether protection from boosters holds steady or continues to drop after four to five months — and if it keeps dropping, how steeply. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6576138138771057}
“It’s not only the number, it’s the inflection of the curve,” he said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5961760878562927}
That means more uncertainty for Americans exhausted by frequent changes in vaccine recommendations — pivots largely forced by the onset of new variants. Dr. Sterling Ransone, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, said his patients keep asking about whether a fourth shot will be necessary and if so, when. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9760053753852844}
“It’s frustrating, right?” said Dr. Ransone, who practices in the small town of Deltaville, Va. “We humans want some certainty and control of the situation. And this is a case where we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. We don’t know the exact recommendation.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7296559810638428}
In Bangor, Maine, Dr. James W. Jarvis, who leads Covid response for Northern Light Health, a local health care system, said that he stresses to his patients how well the vaccines are working, even if boosters are needed. Although they don’t offer complete protection, he said, “the most recent data really suggests that these vaccines are still doing a good job.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9664584398269653}
Data from Britain is similar to that from the C.D.C., indicating that boosters are about 75 percent to 85 percent effective against hospitalization four to six months after they are given. Israel has also noted waning of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine’s effectiveness in the months after a booster shot, according to the C.D.C. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9765828251838684}
Israel began offering a fourth shot in late December, at first only to health care workers though eligibility has broadened. The C.D.C. has recommended that those with immune deficiencies get three shots as part of their initial series, followed by a fourth shot as a booster. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9421898126602173}
Biden administration officials say two-thirds of eligible adults have gotten a booster shot since the additional injections were authorized in November. Uptake has been slower among children over 12, who only became eligible in early January. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9214186072349548}
Dr. Marks said it may turn out that the best time for an additional shot is this fall, when the spread of the coronavirus is expected to pick up again. “Barring any surprises from new variants, maybe the best thing is to think about our booster strategy in conjunction with the influenza vaccine next fall, and get as many people as possible boosted then,” he said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8898653984069824}
Dr. Ransone said some of his patients would prefer that, so they can get their immunizations in a single visit. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5687988996505737}
At a session hosted last month by the F.D.A. and the University of California, San Francisco, Dr. Marks said he hoped that a third shot would be enough of a shield against disease that only a yearly Covid booster would be needed. But both he and Dr. Fauci said it is impossible to make any prediction without more data. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.972416341304779}
Earlier this month, Dr. Fauci suggested that any recommendation would likely be aimed at those most at risk, possibly based on age as well as underlying conditions. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6482400298118591}
“I don’t think you’re going to be hearing, if you do, any kind of recommendations that would be across the board for everyone,” he said at a White House briefing. “It very likely will take into account what subset of people have a diminished, or not, protection against the important parameters such as hospitalization.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5949333906173706}

WASHINGTON — Although new federal data suggests that the effectiveness of booster shots wanes after about four months, the Biden administration is not planning to recommend fourth doses of the coronavirus vaccine anytime soon. “We simply don’t have enough data to know that it’s a good thing to do,” Dr. Peter Marks, who heads the division of the Food and Drug Administration that regulates vaccines, said in an interview this week. In a separate interview, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the chief medical adviser to the White House, said the vaccines are still a firm bulwark against severe illness, despite data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing that booster shots lose some of their potency after four to five months. The C.D.C.’s research, released last Friday, analyzed hospitalizations and visits to emergency rooms and urgent care clinics in 10 states by people who had had booster shots of either Moderna’s or Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine. The study showed the level of protection against hospitalization fell from 91 percent in the two months after a third shot to 78 percent after four to five months. Effectiveness against visits to emergency rooms or urgent care clinics declined from 87 percent to 66 percent. Evidence The data came with major caveats: Researchers did not examine variations by age group, underlying medical conditions or the presence of immune deficiencies. Still, they said, the findings underscored the possible importance of a fourth shot. Rebuttal “‘Should I get a fourth shot?’ That’s what a lot of people are asking me,” Dr. Fauci said. “The answer is if you look at where we are now, it looks like it’s good protection. Seventy-eight percent is good.” The administration’s vaccine strategy has been under constant review since President Biden took office. What comes next, Dr. Fauci said, will depend on whether protection from boosters holds steady or continues to drop after four to five months — and if it keeps dropping, how steeply. Evidence “It’s not only the number, it’s the inflection of the curve,” he said. Claim That means more uncertainty for Americans exhausted by frequent changes in vaccine recommendations — pivots largely forced by the onset of new variants. Dr. Sterling Ransone, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, said his patients keep asking about whether a fourth shot will be necessary and if so, when. “It’s frustrating, right?” said Dr. Ransone, who practices in the small town of Deltaville, Va. “We humans want some certainty and control of the situation. And this is a case where we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. We don’t know the exact recommendation.” In Bangor, Maine, Dr. James W. Jarvis, who leads Covid response for Northern Light Health, a local health care system, said that he stresses to his patients how well the vaccines are working, even if boosters are needed. Although they don’t offer complete protection, he said, “the most recent data really suggests that these vaccines are still doing a good job.” Data from Britain is similar to that from the C.D.C., indicating that boosters are about 75 percent to 85 percent effective against hospitalization four to six months after they are given. Israel has also noted waning of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine’s effectiveness in the months after a booster shot, according to the C.D.C. Israel began offering a fourth shot in late December, at first only to health care workers though eligibility has broadened. The C.D.C. has recommended that those with immune deficiencies get three shots as part of their initial series, followed by a fourth shot as a booster. Biden administration officials say two-thirds of eligible adults have gotten a booster shot since the additional injections were authorized in November. Uptake has been slower among children over 12, who only became eligible in early January. Dr. Marks said it may turn out that the best time for an additional shot is this fall, when the spread of the coronavirus is expected to pick up again. “Barring any surprises from new variants, maybe the best thing is to think about our booster strategy in conjunction with the influenza vaccine next fall, and get as many people as possible boosted then,” he said. Evidence Dr. Ransone said some of his patients would prefer that, so they can get their immunizations in a single visit. Claim At a session hosted last month by the F.D.A. and the University of California, San Francisco, Dr. Marks said he hoped that a third shot would be enough of a shield against disease that only a yearly Covid booster would be needed. But both he and Dr. Fauci said it is impossible to make any prediction without more data. Evidence Earlier this month, Dr. Fauci suggested that any recommendation would likely be aimed at those most at risk, possibly based on age as well as underlying conditions. Claim “I don’t think you’re going to be hearing, if you do, any kind of recommendations that would be across the board for everyone,” he said at a White House briefing. “It very likely will take into account what subset of people have a diminished, or not, protection against the important parameters such as hospitalization.” Evidence

nytimes\girls-eating-disorders-pandemic.txt

Using custom data configuration default-452f73eba769cf53

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-452f73eba769cf53\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-452f73eba769cf53\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

During the pandemic, emergency rooms across the country reported an increase in visits from teenage girls dealing with eating and other disorders, including anxiety, depression and stress, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6547771692276001}
The report provides new detail about the kinds of mental health issues affecting a generation of adolescents. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8916306495666504}
Mental health experts hypothesize that the pandemic prompted some youth to feel isolated, lonely and out-of-control. Some coped by seeking to have control over their own behavior, said Emily Pluhar, a pediatric psychologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and instructor at Harvard Medical School. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8594391942024231}
“You take a very vulnerable group and put on a global pandemic,” she said. “The eating disorders are out of control.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5771181583404541}
In the C.D.C. study, the agency said that the proportion of eating disorder visits doubled among teenage girls, set off by pandemic-related risk factors, like the “lack of structure in daily routine, emotional distress and changes in food availability.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7921107411384583}
The agency said that the increase in tic disorders was “atypical,” as these disorders often present earlier, and are more common in boys. But the C.D.C., reinforcing speculation from other clinicians and researchers, said that some teenage girls may be developing tics after seeing the phenomenon spread widely on social media, notably on TikTok. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8408066630363464}
“Stress of the pandemic or exposure to severe tics, highlighted on social media platforms, might be associated with increases in visits with tics and tic-like behavior among adolescent females,” the C.D.C. wrote. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7018731236457825}
In a related report, the C.D.C. also said on Friday that the increase in visits for mental health issues occurred as emergency rooms reported sharp declines overall in visits during the pandemic. As compared with 2019, overall visits fell by 51 percent in 2020 and by 22 percent in 2021, declines that the agency attributed in part to families delaying care, and a drop in physical injuries from activities like swimming and running. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9908079504966736}
There was a decline in overall emergency room visits for mental health conditions among all youths, up to age 17. Increases occurred for particular maladies, and particularly among teenage girls. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7241987586021423}
More broadly, the surge in adolescent mental health distress appears to have intensified during the pandemic, but it began earlier. Emergency room visits among youths related to depression, anxiety and similar issues rose by 28 percent from 2007 to 2018, according to another report by the surgeon general. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.932631254196167}
In its report on Friday, the C.D.C. said that mental health-related emergency room visits for teenage boys fell in both 2020 and 2021 as compared with 2019. But the C.D.C. also reported that the data was nuanced and that the visitation patterns for boys, as well as girls, depended on specific mental health condition and time period. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9825387001037598}
“These sex differences might represent differences in need, recognition and health care-seeking behavior,” the C.D.C. wrote. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4927998185157776}
For teenage girls, weekly emergency room visits rose for eating and tic disorders during 2020; and for those conditions and obsessive compulsive disorders in 2021. During January of 2022, the C.D.C. said there also was an increase in anxiety, trauma and stress-related issues. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9872584939002991}

During the pandemic, emergency rooms across the country reported an increase in visits from teenage girls dealing with eating and other disorders, including anxiety, depression and stress, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Evidence The report provides new detail about the kinds of mental health issues affecting a generation of adolescents. Claim Mental health experts hypothesize that the pandemic prompted some youth to feel isolated, lonely and out-of-control. Some coped by seeking to have control over their own behavior, said Emily Pluhar, a pediatric psychologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and instructor at Harvard Medical School. “You take a very vulnerable group and put on a global pandemic,” she said. “The eating disorders are out of control.” In the C.D.C. study, the agency said that the proportion of eating disorder visits doubled among teenage girls, set off by pandemic-related risk factors, like the “lack of structure in daily routine, emotional distress and changes in food availability.” The agency said that the increase in tic disorders was “atypical,” as these disorders often present earlier, and are more common in boys. But the C.D.C., reinforcing speculation from other clinicians and researchers, said that some teenage girls may be developing tics after seeing the phenomenon spread widely on social media, notably on TikTok. “Stress of the pandemic or exposure to severe tics, highlighted on social media platforms, might be associated with increases in visits with tics and tic-like behavior among adolescent females,” the C.D.C. wrote. In a related report, the C.D.C. also said on Friday that the increase in visits for mental health issues occurred as emergency rooms reported sharp declines overall in visits during the pandemic. As compared with 2019, overall visits fell by 51 percent in 2020 and by 22 percent in 2021, declines that the agency attributed in part to families delaying care, and a drop in physical injuries from activities like swimming and running. There was a decline in overall emergency room visits for mental health conditions among all youths, up to age 17. Increases occurred for particular maladies, and particularly among teenage girls. More broadly, the surge in adolescent mental health distress appears to have intensified during the pandemic, but it began earlier. Emergency room visits among youths related to depression, anxiety and similar issues rose by 28 percent from 2007 to 2018, according to another report by the surgeon general. In its report on Friday, the C.D.C. said that mental health-related emergency room visits for teenage boys fell in both 2020 and 2021 as compared with 2019. But the C.D.C. also reported that the data was nuanced and that the visitation patterns for boys, as well as girls, depended on specific mental health condition and time period. “These sex differences might represent differences in need, recognition and health care-seeking behavior,” the C.D.C. wrote. For teenage girls, weekly emergency room visits rose for eating and tic disorders during 2020; and for those conditions and obsessive compulsive disorders in 2021. During January of 2022, the C.D.C. said there also was an increase in anxiety, trauma and stress-related issues. Evidence

nytimes\google-facebook-advertising.txt

Using custom data configuration default-640c7389aced1e39

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-640c7389aced1e39\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-640c7389aced1e39\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. Here is a collection of past columns. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.7628713846206665}
Google and Facebook love to talk about the cutting-edge stuff that they’re working on. Metaverse! Driverless cars! Cloud! Artificial intelligence! {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.5716049075126648}
The reality, though, is that these tech companies are rich and powerful because they are the biggest sellers of advertising in the world. They do essentially the same thing that William Randolph Hearst did a century ago: They draw our attention to try to sell us yoga pants. (OK, Hearst’s newspapers probably didn’t have ads for leggings.) {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.6542215347290039}
There’s a vigorous public debate about the benefits and serious trade-offs of the digital worlds that Google and Facebook created. It’s less jazzy to think about digital advertising that these tech titans have popularized. But like everything else about these companies, it’s complicated and important. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.44185853004455566}
Alphabet, the corporate entity that includes Google, made about 80 percent of its revenue this year from the ads that we see when searching the web, watching YouTube videos, checking out Google Maps and more. Facebook generated 98 percent of its revenue from ads. (Facebook likely won’t mention this today, when it plans to discuss the company’s vision of us living, shopping and working in its virtual reality world.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9923600554466248}
It’s not breaking news that Google and Facebook are souped-up versions of old-school advertising mediums like newspapers or radio. I am stressing the point for two reasons. First, zeroing in on their essence helps demystify those tech superpowers. Google and Facebook seem less mythical and imposing when you know that their empires are built on selling us more socks. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9664011001586914}
Second, I want us to think more about the warts-and-all effects of the Google and Facebook advertising powerhouses. The methods of advertising that the companies helped popularize — highly automated; based on information about who we are, what we do online and where we go; and at a scale unlike anything before — has changed the world around us in both good and harmful ways, without most of us really noticing. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6823540925979614}
Sure, some of the benefits are easy to see. Google and Facebook offer (arguably) helpful products and services at no cost to us, because advertising pays the bills. Ads also make stuff that we use outside Google and Facebook cheaper. Or possibly more expensive, which I’ll get to in a minute. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.6860933303833008}
If you type “Miami vacations” into Google, that’s a blaring signal that you might be interested in booking a hotel room. If a hotel can pay an average of $1 per new customer for its website to show up prominently in those Google search results — versus spending $2 for each customer if it buys a television commercial — those hotel rooms might be cheaper for us. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9880824089050293}
That example is radically oversimplified, but you get the point. Even if you say that you hate ads or never use Facebook, the ads on these sites have beneficial ripple effects. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7402964234352112}
But there are also major drawbacks. To sell ads, Google and Facebook normalized the data arms race to collect as much information about us as possible, and now the bank, grocery store and weather apps are grubbing every detail they can to sell their own ads. Digital advertising also has a persistent problem with fraud and over promises that essentially impose a tax on everything that we buy. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.5846869945526123}
The last thing I’ll mention is the perpetual motion machine of bigness. Google and Facebook are the biggest advertising sellers in the world largely because they are the largest gatherings of humans in the world. More people translate into more spots to sell ads. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.801563560962677}
That has created ripple effects for entertainment companies, newspapers and internet properties to try to merge or do anything they can to get bigger. I wonder if we would have a healthier economy and internet life if Comcast, TikTok and nearly every other company weren’t trying to amass the biggest audience of humans possible — partly to compete with Google and Facebook and sell more ads. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9763007164001465}
Brian X. Chen, the consumer technology columnist for The New York Times, is back with fresh advice on digital record keeping for Covid-19 vaccinations. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5601286292076111}
A few months ago, I shared a tip about how to securely store your digital vaccine card on your phone. As of this week, iPhone users now have a much simpler way to store their vaccine cards by adding the document to Apple’s Wallet app, its software that holds credit cards and important documents like travel itineraries. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.954709529876709}
Here’s how to set it up: {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.777131974697113}
Download and install the latest software update for iOS (version 15.1). To do that, open the Settings app, tap General and then tap Software Update. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.848028838634491}
Now retrieve your digital vaccine card from your health department. These steps vary by state. California residents can visit the vaccine record website for the California Department of Public Health to request a copy of their digital vaccine card. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9084914922714233}
Once you receive the vaccine card, tap and hold down on the QR code — a digital bar code that looks like a bunch of black-and-white squares — to open a menu. Then select “Open in Health.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7558033466339111}
Here, select “Add to Wallet & Health.” Now you can access your vaccine card by opening the Wallet app. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4785892367362976}
Never delete anything, I guess? Facebook told employees to preserve a wide range of internal documents and communications dating back to 2016, my colleagues Ryan Mac and Mike Isaac report. The company said that it did this in response to government inquiries stemming from the internal materials disseminated by Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9503569602966309}
What a reality show teaches us about fame in the internet age: My colleague Amanda Hess has a thoughtful essay about a Hulu series featuring the TikTok-famous D’Amelio family, and the ways that social media is presented as a solution to mental health struggles. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.5629451274871826}
What happens when people use coin-size Bluetooth tracking devices such as Apple’s AirTag to track their stolen cars or scooters? A Washington Post writer found out, including by following the theft of her 1999 Honda Civic. (A subscription may be required.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9676607251167297}
Does Swiss chard go with my wedding dress? A couple took their engagement photos at Berkeley Bowl, a grocery store in the Bay Area with rabid fans. (Our friends at the California Today newsletter wrote about this, too.) {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.846976101398468}
We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.39380958676338196}
If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. You can also read past On Tech columns. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.4619752764701843}

This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. Here is a collection of past columns. Google and Facebook love to talk about the cutting-edge stuff that they’re working on. Metaverse! Driverless cars! Cloud! Artificial intelligence! Lead The reality, though, is that these tech companies are rich and powerful because they are the biggest sellers of advertising in the world. They do essentially the same thing that William Randolph Hearst did a century ago: They draw our attention to try to sell us yoga pants. (OK, Hearst’s newspapers probably didn’t have ads for leggings.) Rebuttal There’s a vigorous public debate about the benefits and serious trade-offs of the digital worlds that Google and Facebook created. It’s less jazzy to think about digital advertising that these tech titans have popularized. But like everything else about these companies, it’s complicated and important. Lead Alphabet, the corporate entity that includes Google, made about 80 percent of its revenue this year from the ads that we see when searching the web, watching YouTube videos, checking out Google Maps and more. Facebook generated 98 percent of its revenue from ads. (Facebook likely won’t mention this today, when it plans to discuss the company’s vision of us living, shopping and working in its virtual reality world.) It’s not breaking news that Google and Facebook are souped-up versions of old-school advertising mediums like newspapers or radio. I am stressing the point for two reasons. First, zeroing in on their essence helps demystify those tech superpowers. Google and Facebook seem less mythical and imposing when you know that their empires are built on selling us more socks. Second, I want us to think more about the warts-and-all effects of the Google and Facebook advertising powerhouses. The methods of advertising that the companies helped popularize — highly automated; based on information about who we are, what we do online and where we go; and at a scale unlike anything before — has changed the world around us in both good and harmful ways, without most of us really noticing. Evidence Sure, some of the benefits are easy to see. Google and Facebook offer (arguably) helpful products and services at no cost to us, because advertising pays the bills. Ads also make stuff that we use outside Google and Facebook cheaper. Or possibly more expensive, which I’ll get to in a minute. Counterclaim If you type “Miami vacations” into Google, that’s a blaring signal that you might be interested in booking a hotel room. If a hotel can pay an average of $1 per new customer for its website to show up prominently in those Google search results — versus spending $2 for each customer if it buys a television commercial — those hotel rooms might be cheaper for us. That example is radically oversimplified, but you get the point. Even if you say that you hate ads or never use Facebook, the ads on these sites have beneficial ripple effects. Evidence But there are also major drawbacks. To sell ads, Google and Facebook normalized the data arms race to collect as much information about us as possible, and now the bank, grocery store and weather apps are grubbing every detail they can to sell their own ads. Digital advertising also has a persistent problem with fraud and over promises that essentially impose a tax on everything that we buy. Rebuttal The last thing I’ll mention is the perpetual motion machine of bigness. Google and Facebook are the biggest advertising sellers in the world largely because they are the largest gatherings of humans in the world. More people translate into more spots to sell ads. That has created ripple effects for entertainment companies, newspapers and internet properties to try to merge or do anything they can to get bigger. I wonder if we would have a healthier economy and internet life if Comcast, TikTok and nearly every other company weren’t trying to amass the biggest audience of humans possible — partly to compete with Google and Facebook and sell more ads. Evidence Brian X. Chen, the consumer technology columnist for The New York Times, is back with fresh advice on digital record keeping for Covid-19 vaccinations. Claim A few months ago, I shared a tip about how to securely store your digital vaccine card on your phone. As of this week, iPhone users now have a much simpler way to store their vaccine cards by adding the document to Apple’s Wallet app, its software that holds credit cards and important documents like travel itineraries. Evidence Here’s how to set it up: Claim Download and install the latest software update for iOS (version 15.1). To do that, open the Settings app, tap General and then tap Software Update. Now retrieve your digital vaccine card from your health department. These steps vary by state. California residents can visit the vaccine record website for the California Department of Public Health to request a copy of their digital vaccine card. Once you receive the vaccine card, tap and hold down on the QR code — a digital bar code that looks like a bunch of black-and-white squares — to open a menu. Then select “Open in Health.” Here, select “Add to Wallet & Health.” Now you can access your vaccine card by opening the Wallet app. Never delete anything, I guess? Facebook told employees to preserve a wide range of internal documents and communications dating back to 2016, my colleagues Ryan Mac and Mike Isaac report. The company said that it did this in response to government inquiries stemming from the internal materials disseminated by Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager. Evidence What a reality show teaches us about fame in the internet age: My colleague Amanda Hess has a thoughtful essay about a Hulu series featuring the TikTok-famous D’Amelio family, and the ways that social media is presented as a solution to mental health struggles. Lead What happens when people use coin-size Bluetooth tracking devices such as Apple’s AirTag to track their stolen cars or scooters? A Washington Post writer found out, including by following the theft of her 1999 Honda Civic. (A subscription may be required.) Evidence Does Swiss chard go with my wedding dress? A couple took their engagement photos at Berkeley Bowl, a grocery store in the Bay Area with rabid fans. (Our friends at the California Today newsletter wrote about this, too.) Lead We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. Evidence If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. You can also read past On Tech columns. Concluding Statement

nytimes\gregory-peck-mockingbird-sequel.txt

Using custom data configuration default-01aee1ec192a8c11

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-01aee1ec192a8c11\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-01aee1ec192a8c11\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

In the years since Harper Lee’s death in 2016, her 1960 novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” has been reimagined in surprising new ways. It was released as a graphic novel in 2018, and adapted into a hit Broadway production by the screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.7724946141242981}
Now, after a yearslong legal battle, the path has been cleared for another major adaptation: a film remake or sequel. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6658762097358704}
No plans have been announced, or are even being contemplated, according to the successors and heirs of the makers of the original 1962 film adaptation starring Gregory Peck. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.44161877036094666}
But unsealed documents filed in an Alabama federal court reveal how those successors and heirs successfully fought Lee’s estate to preserve the right to make any sequel or derivative movie, which they argued had been originally granted by Lee in 1961 and reaffirmed by her in 2008. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8788473606109619}
The dispute over the movie rights to Lee’s classic has been brewing for years. Shortly before her death, Lee tried to revoke film rights from the heirs of the original film producers. The producers entered a counterclaim, arguing that their earlier deal with Lee remained in effect, and that the estate had no right to enter any agreements with other producers or filmmakers for anything derived from “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “Go Set a Watchman,” another novel by Lee, released in 2015. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.7783490419387817}
The drawn-out fight pitted a best-selling American literary icon against the descendants of filmmakers who had produced an acclaimed movie that was nominated for an Oscar for best picture and that Lee herself professed to love. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7769071459770203}
As part of an arbitration settlement, which was reported earlier by the digital media company Puck, the Lee estate also agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to the heirs of the “Mockingbird” producer Alan Pakula; the director, Robert Mulligan; and Peck, who played the lead role as Atticus Finch, a small-town Alabama lawyer who fights to exonerate a wrongly convicted Black man. Cecilia Peck, the actor’s daughter, signed for the Atticus Corporation, which was party to the agreement. The agreement also gives the producers rights to make a film adaptation of “Go Set a Watchman,” with the caveat that the estate must sign off on it. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9868804216384888}
It was another legal setback for Lee’s estate, which recently lost a battle with the publisher of a stage version of “Mockingbird,” after an arbitrator ruled that the estate must pay more than $2.5 million in damages and fees to Dramatic Publishing, a theatrical publishing company that has licensed a stage adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird” for decades. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7986599206924438}
Lee herself was such a fan of the 1962 film that she was firmly opposed to a sequel or remake that might dilute its legacy. In a 2008 letter to Peck’s widow, she was adamant that no one but Peck should embody Atticus onscreen: “Of course, he was the only Atticus & I hope there is some way to prevent a re-make, of any kind,” she wrote. “I know that we can ‘forbid’ forever, but things happen.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6738176345825195}
In 2008, Lee entered a new agreement with the successors to the original producers, which gave them motion picture and other rights to “To Kill a Mockingbird,” while Lee reserved the literary, stage, television and single-person radio rights. Lee’s representatives tried to terminate those rights in 2015, just months before her death, but the arbitrator ruled that the effort to revoke rights had not been valid. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9647197723388672}
In a statement, Tonja B. Carter, executor of the Lee estate, lamented the outcome of the arbitration, and said that Lee had been misguided when she entered the 2008 agreement. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.60531085729599}
“We are disappointed with the outcome of this arbitration,” she said. “It was based entirely upon a one-sided 2008 agreement that the heirs of Gregory Peck convinced Ms. Lee to sign, at a time when she was advised solely by her 93-year-old sister, even though it was entirely against her interests to do so. The 2008 agreement transferred extraordinarily valuable intellectual property rights owned by Ms. Lee in exchange for $1.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8727887868881226}
A lawyer representing the producers, Mark Lee, said that his clients fought to retain film rights partly to prevent anyone else from making a movie that would undermine the spirit of the novel or the original film. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.571821391582489}
“They want to be proper guardians of those rights,” he said. “They want nothing to happen with those rights that they do not approve of, or that would not honor Ms. Lee’s legacy.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7536394596099854}
He added that there were no immediate plans to forge ahead with a film based on Lee’s famous characters. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6320765018463135}
“My clients have no present intention to create or produce a remake or sequel,” he said. “I would never say never, but at present they have no such plans.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.475516140460968}

In the years since Harper Lee’s death in 2016, her 1960 novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” has been reimagined in surprising new ways. It was released as a graphic novel in 2018, and adapted into a hit Broadway production by the screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. Lead Now, after a yearslong legal battle, the path has been cleared for another major adaptation: a film remake or sequel. No plans have been announced, or are even being contemplated, according to the successors and heirs of the makers of the original 1962 film adaptation starring Gregory Peck. Claim But unsealed documents filed in an Alabama federal court reveal how those successors and heirs successfully fought Lee’s estate to preserve the right to make any sequel or derivative movie, which they argued had been originally granted by Lee in 1961 and reaffirmed by her in 2008. Rebuttal The dispute over the movie rights to Lee’s classic has been brewing for years. Shortly before her death, Lee tried to revoke film rights from the heirs of the original film producers. The producers entered a counterclaim, arguing that their earlier deal with Lee remained in effect, and that the estate had no right to enter any agreements with other producers or filmmakers for anything derived from “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “Go Set a Watchman,” another novel by Lee, released in 2015. Lead The drawn-out fight pitted a best-selling American literary icon against the descendants of filmmakers who had produced an acclaimed movie that was nominated for an Oscar for best picture and that Lee herself professed to love. As part of an arbitration settlement, which was reported earlier by the digital media company Puck, the Lee estate also agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to the heirs of the “Mockingbird” producer Alan Pakula; the director, Robert Mulligan; and Peck, who played the lead role as Atticus Finch, a small-town Alabama lawyer who fights to exonerate a wrongly convicted Black man. Cecilia Peck, the actor’s daughter, signed for the Atticus Corporation, which was party to the agreement. The agreement also gives the producers rights to make a film adaptation of “Go Set a Watchman,” with the caveat that the estate must sign off on it. It was another legal setback for Lee’s estate, which recently lost a battle with the publisher of a stage version of “Mockingbird,” after an arbitrator ruled that the estate must pay more than $2.5 million in damages and fees to Dramatic Publishing, a theatrical publishing company that has licensed a stage adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird” for decades. Lee herself was such a fan of the 1962 film that she was firmly opposed to a sequel or remake that might dilute its legacy. In a 2008 letter to Peck’s widow, she was adamant that no one but Peck should embody Atticus onscreen: “Of course, he was the only Atticus & I hope there is some way to prevent a re-make, of any kind,” she wrote. “I know that we can ‘forbid’ forever, but things happen.” In 2008, Lee entered a new agreement with the successors to the original producers, which gave them motion picture and other rights to “To Kill a Mockingbird,” while Lee reserved the literary, stage, television and single-person radio rights. Lee’s representatives tried to terminate those rights in 2015, just months before her death, but the arbitrator ruled that the effort to revoke rights had not been valid. In a statement, Tonja B. Carter, executor of the Lee estate, lamented the outcome of the arbitration, and said that Lee had been misguided when she entered the 2008 agreement. “We are disappointed with the outcome of this arbitration,” she said. “It was based entirely upon a one-sided 2008 agreement that the heirs of Gregory Peck convinced Ms. Lee to sign, at a time when she was advised solely by her 93-year-old sister, even though it was entirely against her interests to do so. The 2008 agreement transferred extraordinarily valuable intellectual property rights owned by Ms. Lee in exchange for $1.” A lawyer representing the producers, Mark Lee, said that his clients fought to retain film rights partly to prevent anyone else from making a movie that would undermine the spirit of the novel or the original film. “They want to be proper guardians of those rights,” he said. “They want nothing to happen with those rights that they do not approve of, or that would not honor Ms. Lee’s legacy.” Evidence He added that there were no immediate plans to forge ahead with a film based on Lee’s famous characters. Claim “My clients have no present intention to create or produce a remake or sequel,” he said. “I would never say never, but at present they have no such plans.” Evidence

nytimes\hadley-palmer-greenwich.txt

Using custom data configuration default-45305696bb8bdbe3

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-45305696bb8bdbe3\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-45305696bb8bdbe3\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

GREENWICH, Conn. — In a place where it is difficult to stand out among the secluded mansions, Birkin bags and Mercedes-Benz G-Wagons, one woman has drawn unwanted attention this week to one of America’s wealthiest bastions. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5974879860877991}
Not long ago, photographs of Hadley Palmer, 53, had regularly graced the society pages here. She was a fixture at charity galas and can’t-miss parties. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7985981106758118}
The daughter of a hedge fund founder, she lived with her family in a $10 million mansion overlooking Long Island Sound in Belle Haven. The enclave on a peninsula has been home to hedge fund moguls like Ray Dalio and Paul Tudor Jones II — and at least one celebrity, the singer Diana Ross. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7851139903068542}
Now, Ms. Palmer is inmate No. 439165 at the York Correctional Institution in Niantic, with her mug shot in the papers and in heavy rotation on the local TV news. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.619834840297699}
This week, lurid details began to emerge from a sealed criminal case of how she pleaded guilty in January to secretly recording videos of several minors in intimate situations. All three victims were under 18, and at least one was 15 or younger, the police said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8833463788032532}
Prosecutors have recommended that she serve 90 days to five years in prison, along with 20 years of probation. She must also register as a sex offender. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8616076707839966}
“I’m sure someone is going to make a movie about it,” Herb Foote, 61, a Greenwich resident who sells solar roofing panels, said on Tuesday. He learned about the case from his wife. “It’s like, whoa,” he said. “Everybody’s imagination runs amok.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.842825174331665}
Mr. Foote was walking up Greenwich Avenue, an upscale business corridor lined with boutiques and bistros, where one section of sidewalk is heated and the burger at the cafe Ruby & Bella’s will cost you $27 (unless you prefer the $18 hummus). It is not uncommon to see Judge Judy Sheindlin shopping or Martha Stewart lunching.  {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.5964539051055908}
Many people approached here for comment this week treated Ms. Palmer’s arrest as taboo. Outside of Richards, a luxury clothing store known for its trunk shows, one woman scurried away, a velour Chanel Paris tote bag dangling from her shoulder, when asked about the case. Another waved off a reporter, explaining: “I don’t like to be exposed.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.935901939868927}
Marjory Tait, 90, a retired probate court employee, said Greenwich was a different place than the town she moved to in the 1960s, one where opulence had become amplified. The average home price recently eclipsed $3 million, a buying bonanza catalyzed by the flight of New Yorkers during the pandemic. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9630199670791626}
But at least one thing remains the same, she said: “They don’t like scandal much here.” {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.6696871519088745}
Ms. Palmer’s arrest last October went largely unnoticed. Soon after, her lawyer sought to have her case sealed, first on a temporary basis and then permanently. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6186577677726746}
A Connecticut Superior Court judge granted Ms. Palmer’s request earlier this month, a move supported by lawyers seeking to protect her victims. The Associated Press opposed the step, with a reporter for the wire service telling the judge that it had created the impression of a second, privileged tier of justice. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8379170298576355}
Michael T. Meehan, Ms. Palmer’s lawyer, has steadfastly not responded to requests for comment. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4787210524082184}
A Greenwich psychologist has also been arrested on a charge that he had failed to report the matter, as required by Connecticut’s child welfare laws. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5399786233901978}
Anna Belton, who lives in New York City and was in Greenwich for business on Wednesday, said that Ms. Palmer’s case had made her believe that “people who have power and money can do whatever they want.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7382745146751404}
Ms. Belton added that as a Black woman, she felt like an outsider while walking near downtown, where the customers are mostly white and wealthy. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6729512810707092}
“I definitely don’t belong here,” she said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.39791539311408997}
Beside her was Megan McGrath, 50, who has lived in Greenwich for a decade and expressed her exasperation over the paucity of details about the case. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.51295405626297}
“How did it get sealed?” she asked. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5713529586791992}
Ms. McGrath said she was still not used to the signs of prosperity that surrounded her. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.50592041015625}
“I drive a Ford versus, you know, a Maserati,” she said. {'label': 'Position', 'score': 0.28153520822525024}
A couple of stores down, past Lululemon and Saks Fifth Avenue, past a Yeti brand water bowl for thirsty pets, was Sekani Thompson, 29, busy at work with a cleaning towel in hand. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9021629691123962}
For nine years, he has worked in Greenwich as a window washer. What Ms. Palmer did was “sickening,” he said. But it spoke to “how rich people get out of stuff easily,” he added. He focused back on his work. He would be done with just a few more swipes of the glass. Behind it was a golden Rolex watch worth $86,000. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9777025580406189}
In Belle Haven, property records show that Ms. Palmer, a mother of four, shared a renovated 19th-century mansion with her now-estranged husband, Bradley C. Palmer, a Greenwich financier. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7573665380477905}
The home, which has a solarium, walled gardens and a carriage house, is less than a mile from where one of the most searing crimes in Greenwich’s history took place: the 1975 murder of Martha Moxley, 15, who had been bludgeoned with a golf club and stabbed. That crime spawned books and intense media spotlight, culminating more than 25 years later with the conviction of Michael Skakel, a Kennedy cousin, in the teenager’s murder. Mr. Skakel’s conviction was overturned in 2018. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9886309504508972}
“Historically, Belle Haven has had a dark side,” Timothy Dumas, author of “Greentown: Murder and Mystery in Greenwich, America’s Wealthiest Community,” said on Tuesday. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.46122342348098755}
Mr. Dumas described Belle Haven as “Gatsby-esque.” The enclave has its own security force, and its bylaws prohibit outsiders from taking pictures. That didn’t stop a photographer for a British tabloid this week. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8496832251548767}
A parent of a former schoolmate of one of Ms. Palmer’s children said this week that nothing had seemed amiss during repeated encounters with her. “These are nice people we thought we knew,” said the parent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid embarrassment. “You just never know about people.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9723633527755737}
While the criminal case against Ms. Palmer is rather opaque, the unsealed records in her divorce proceedings offer a glimpse into her legal and personal strife. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5833578109741211}
When her estranged husband sought access to her social media accounts, along with any videos or photographs she may have sent to anyone with whom she had been romantically or sexually involved, Ms. Palmer objected last July. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5448309779167175}
“The plaintiff asserts her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination,” Ms. Palmer’s lawyer wrote in a motion at the time. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3748912811279297}
Mr. Palmer did not respond to a text message seeking an interview on Wednesday. His lawyers also did not respond, including one defending him in a lawsuit filed in 2021 by a former chief financial officer of his firm who contends that Mr. Palmer never paid him $3.4 million in earnings. In court filings, Mr. Palmer’s lawyer disputed those accusations. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9742270112037659}
Legal observers in Connecticut said that the hushed circumstances of Ms. Palmer’s case had recalled the systematic sealing of court files of the rich and politically connected in the state more than two decades ago. The contentious and informal practice was known as a shadow docket. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7655298709869385}
“It was very clearly delineated for insiders,” Philip Russell, a longtime defense lawyer from Greenwich and former prosecutor in the Bronx, said on Tuesday. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6922072172164917}
The inequitable arrangement prompted changes to the law and the practice book for lawyers that required a notice period for the public to comment on the sealing of cases and a judicial fact-finding process, Mr. Russell said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7186528444290161}
Mr. Russell knows what it’s like to have a criminal case become magnified, both as a lawyer and a defendant. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7229747772216797}
In 2006, he became entangled in a widely publicized criminal case in town when he destroyed a laptop computer containing sexual abuse images of children that had been used by a longtime music director at Christ Church Greenwich. Mr. Russell, who had been representing the church, pleaded guilty to failing to report the music director’s crimes and was sentenced to six months of home confinement. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9744235873222351}
Christopher Fountain, who blogs about Greenwich on his website, For What It’s Worth, suggested on Monday that the legal system had exercised unusual discretion on Ms. Palmer’s behalf. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.46471577882766724}
Writing on his blog, he cited the case of an elected official in Greenwich who made international headlines in 2016 after his arrest on charges that he had groped a woman and told her that he no longer needed to be politically correct because Donald J. Trump had been elected president. The official, Chris von Keyserling, was convicted of fourth-degree sexual assault, a misdemeanor, and sentenced to 90 days of house arrest. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9878209233283997}
“Chris, of course, lives in a second-floor walk-up apartment in Cos Cob, and not in Belle Haven,” Mr. Fountain wrote. “Mind you, Hadley’s shelter under the cone of silence has just ended rather spectacularly.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9127486348152161}
Not everyone in Greenwich has an opinion about the case. On Wednesday morning, Alberto Flores was walking a mile and a half to work — to save money, he explained in Spanish — past the town’s Cadillac and Lexus dealerships. Asked about Ms. Palmer, he replied, “I don’t have time for that.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7735908627510071}

GREENWICH, Conn. — In a place where it is difficult to stand out among the secluded mansions, Birkin bags and Mercedes-Benz G-Wagons, one woman has drawn unwanted attention this week to one of America’s wealthiest bastions. Not long ago, photographs of Hadley Palmer, 53, had regularly graced the society pages here. She was a fixture at charity galas and can’t-miss parties. The daughter of a hedge fund founder, she lived with her family in a $10 million mansion overlooking Long Island Sound in Belle Haven. The enclave on a peninsula has been home to hedge fund moguls like Ray Dalio and Paul Tudor Jones II — and at least one celebrity, the singer Diana Ross. Now, Ms. Palmer is inmate No. 439165 at the York Correctional Institution in Niantic, with her mug shot in the papers and in heavy rotation on the local TV news. This week, lurid details began to emerge from a sealed criminal case of how she pleaded guilty in January to secretly recording videos of several minors in intimate situations. All three victims were under 18, and at least one was 15 or younger, the police said. Prosecutors have recommended that she serve 90 days to five years in prison, along with 20 years of probation. She must also register as a sex offender. “I’m sure someone is going to make a movie about it,” Herb Foote, 61, a Greenwich resident who sells solar roofing panels, said on Tuesday. He learned about the case from his wife. “It’s like, whoa,” he said. “Everybody’s imagination runs amok.” Evidence Mr. Foote was walking up Greenwich Avenue, an upscale business corridor lined with boutiques and bistros, where one section of sidewalk is heated and the burger at the cafe Ruby & Bella’s will cost you $27 (unless you prefer the $18 hummus). It is not uncommon to see Judge Judy Sheindlin shopping or Martha Stewart lunching. Lead Many people approached here for comment this week treated Ms. Palmer’s arrest as taboo. Outside of Richards, a luxury clothing store known for its trunk shows, one woman scurried away, a velour Chanel Paris tote bag dangling from her shoulder, when asked about the case. Another waved off a reporter, explaining: “I don’t like to be exposed.” Marjory Tait, 90, a retired probate court employee, said Greenwich was a different place than the town she moved to in the 1960s, one where opulence had become amplified. The average home price recently eclipsed $3 million, a buying bonanza catalyzed by the flight of New Yorkers during the pandemic. Evidence But at least one thing remains the same, she said: “They don’t like scandal much here.” Rebuttal Ms. Palmer’s arrest last October went largely unnoticed. Soon after, her lawyer sought to have her case sealed, first on a temporary basis and then permanently. A Connecticut Superior Court judge granted Ms. Palmer’s request earlier this month, a move supported by lawyers seeking to protect her victims. The Associated Press opposed the step, with a reporter for the wire service telling the judge that it had created the impression of a second, privileged tier of justice. Evidence Michael T. Meehan, Ms. Palmer’s lawyer, has steadfastly not responded to requests for comment. Claim A Greenwich psychologist has also been arrested on a charge that he had failed to report the matter, as required by Connecticut’s child welfare laws. Anna Belton, who lives in New York City and was in Greenwich for business on Wednesday, said that Ms. Palmer’s case had made her believe that “people who have power and money can do whatever they want.” Ms. Belton added that as a Black woman, she felt like an outsider while walking near downtown, where the customers are mostly white and wealthy. Evidence “I definitely don’t belong here,” she said. Claim Beside her was Megan McGrath, 50, who has lived in Greenwich for a decade and expressed her exasperation over the paucity of details about the case. Evidence “How did it get sealed?” she asked. Ms. McGrath said she was still not used to the signs of prosperity that surrounded her. Claim “I drive a Ford versus, you know, a Maserati,” she said. Position A couple of stores down, past Lululemon and Saks Fifth Avenue, past a Yeti brand water bowl for thirsty pets, was Sekani Thompson, 29, busy at work with a cleaning towel in hand. For nine years, he has worked in Greenwich as a window washer. What Ms. Palmer did was “sickening,” he said. But it spoke to “how rich people get out of stuff easily,” he added. He focused back on his work. He would be done with just a few more swipes of the glass. Behind it was a golden Rolex watch worth $86,000. In Belle Haven, property records show that Ms. Palmer, a mother of four, shared a renovated 19th-century mansion with her now-estranged husband, Bradley C. Palmer, a Greenwich financier. The home, which has a solarium, walled gardens and a carriage house, is less than a mile from where one of the most searing crimes in Greenwich’s history took place: the 1975 murder of Martha Moxley, 15, who had been bludgeoned with a golf club and stabbed. That crime spawned books and intense media spotlight, culminating more than 25 years later with the conviction of Michael Skakel, a Kennedy cousin, in the teenager’s murder. Mr. Skakel’s conviction was overturned in 2018. “Historically, Belle Haven has had a dark side,” Timothy Dumas, author of “Greentown: Murder and Mystery in Greenwich, America’s Wealthiest Community,” said on Tuesday. Mr. Dumas described Belle Haven as “Gatsby-esque.” The enclave has its own security force, and its bylaws prohibit outsiders from taking pictures. That didn’t stop a photographer for a British tabloid this week. A parent of a former schoolmate of one of Ms. Palmer’s children said this week that nothing had seemed amiss during repeated encounters with her. “These are nice people we thought we knew,” said the parent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid embarrassment. “You just never know about people.” Evidence While the criminal case against Ms. Palmer is rather opaque, the unsealed records in her divorce proceedings offer a glimpse into her legal and personal strife. Claim When her estranged husband sought access to her social media accounts, along with any videos or photographs she may have sent to anyone with whom she had been romantically or sexually involved, Ms. Palmer objected last July. “The plaintiff asserts her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination,” Ms. Palmer’s lawyer wrote in a motion at the time. Mr. Palmer did not respond to a text message seeking an interview on Wednesday. His lawyers also did not respond, including one defending him in a lawsuit filed in 2021 by a former chief financial officer of his firm who contends that Mr. Palmer never paid him $3.4 million in earnings. In court filings, Mr. Palmer’s lawyer disputed those accusations. Legal observers in Connecticut said that the hushed circumstances of Ms. Palmer’s case had recalled the systematic sealing of court files of the rich and politically connected in the state more than two decades ago. The contentious and informal practice was known as a shadow docket. “It was very clearly delineated for insiders,” Philip Russell, a longtime defense lawyer from Greenwich and former prosecutor in the Bronx, said on Tuesday. The inequitable arrangement prompted changes to the law and the practice book for lawyers that required a notice period for the public to comment on the sealing of cases and a judicial fact-finding process, Mr. Russell said. Evidence Mr. Russell knows what it’s like to have a criminal case become magnified, both as a lawyer and a defendant. Claim In 2006, he became entangled in a widely publicized criminal case in town when he destroyed a laptop computer containing sexual abuse images of children that had been used by a longtime music director at Christ Church Greenwich. Mr. Russell, who had been representing the church, pleaded guilty to failing to report the music director’s crimes and was sentenced to six months of home confinement. Christopher Fountain, who blogs about Greenwich on his website, For What It’s Worth, suggested on Monday that the legal system had exercised unusual discretion on Ms. Palmer’s behalf. Writing on his blog, he cited the case of an elected official in Greenwich who made international headlines in 2016 after his arrest on charges that he had groped a woman and told her that he no longer needed to be politically correct because Donald J. Trump had been elected president. The official, Chris von Keyserling, was convicted of fourth-degree sexual assault, a misdemeanor, and sentenced to 90 days of house arrest. “Chris, of course, lives in a second-floor walk-up apartment in Cos Cob, and not in Belle Haven,” Mr. Fountain wrote. “Mind you, Hadley’s shelter under the cone of silence has just ended rather spectacularly.” Not everyone in Greenwich has an opinion about the case. On Wednesday morning, Alberto Flores was walking a mile and a half to work — to save money, he explained in Spanish — past the town’s Cadillac and Lexus dealerships. Asked about Ms. Palmer, he replied, “I don’t have time for that.” Evidence

nytimes\happiness-confidence-struggle.txt

Using custom data configuration default-5afd5bb7e7242e78

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-5afd5bb7e7242e78\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-5afd5bb7e7242e78\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

It happens almost every day: A friend, an acquaintance or a complete stranger confides in me about a past struggle that only a few people in his or her life are privy to, about physical pain or emotional turmoil that almost nobody sees. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7900803685188293}
It happened just the other day. Someone who’d always struck me as a portrait of unflappable confidence and unforced buoyancy told me for the first time about a medical misfortune that he suffered decades ago and repercussions from it that linger. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7682421803474426}
I was surprised by the details of his hardship but not by the fact of it. His story is my story. My story is many people’s stories. Our outward calm veils inner turbulence. Much of the confidence we project is a camouflage we perfect. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.49624165892601013}
And when you admit to that, you’re blessed with others’ admissions. You join an informal community of people eager or at least willing to embrace the messy and liberating truth. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6934242844581604}
I joined it after suddenly losing some of my eyesight several years ago, being told that I might go blind and then writing about that. My account seemed to resonate with readers in part because my condition exemplified a public-private disconnect. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8519309759140015}
Nothing about my composure or appearance suggested trouble. I met my deadlines. I honored my obligations. My eyes looked the way they’d always looked. But they didn’t act the way they’d always acted. Never again would I read as fleetly and fluidly as before. Never again would I type with as much ease and as few errors. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9436511993408203}
That was the bad part. The good? Never again would I trust that I knew anything important about someone — or, really, anything at all — from what was evident on the surface. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.5141344666481018}
I understand in a new and important way that struggle isn’t exceptional. It’s inevitable. It’s endemic. It’s our default setting. It’s just often hidden, and I wonder what life would be like if we all walked around wearing sandwich boards that listed what we’re enduring. What we’re surviving. What we’ve overcome. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.35315728187561035}
That was the gist of an excerpt from my new book, “The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found,” that The Times published on Tuesday. (To add to that today, here’s a corresponding portion of the audio version of the book.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9227398037910461}
The excerpt comes from a chapter of “The Beauty of Dusk” titled “The Sandwich Board Theory of Life,” which posits that our moments of self-pity would be rarer and our capacity for empathy stronger if we knew the full truth of the people around us. Sometimes we simply can’t, but sometimes it’s a matter of looking more closely, listening more attentively, signaling an openness to that knowledge, asking the right questions. It entails a shift in perspective and a heightened awareness. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9692918062210083}
Much has been written about the psychological impact of the honeyed lives that people project on Instagram, Facebook and other social media. Everyone’s at a party to which you haven’t been invited. Everyone’s children are excelling, everyone’s cakes are rising, everyone’s trip to Grand Cayman or the Grand Canyon was heaven on earth. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.785525918006897}
But that’s only one set of dispatches and one way to read them. I take in different, or at least additional, information. I notice when the CNN anchor John King, who exhibits such preternatural poise and split-second decisiveness in front of those color-coded maps on election night, reveals that more than a decade ago, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8647163510322571}
“I remember like it was yesterday,” he said in an article by Emily Strohm in People magazine in November, mentioning “the first look at the M.R.I. and the lesions that look like little dried flowers running up the spinal cord and nerves.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8391370177268982}
“I was petrified,” he said. And he has lived ever since with the question of whether those lesions might someday impair him. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.479771226644516}
I hear the “cancer” buried in a long story that someone is telling about her past and realize that while the word is rushing by for most listeners, the reality didn’t rush by for her and the fear of its recurrence is probably still present. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5588042140007019}
I welcome the stories shared with me — by the record producer who, at the peak of his career, lost hearing in one ear, jeopardizing his livelihood, or by the Vietnam veteran who sometimes feels acutely self-conscious, all these decades later, about the prosthesis where his lower leg used to be. They’ve been met with mighty challenges, but those trials aren’t obvious to most of the people around them. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5378828048706055}
And I accept that my compromised, imperiled vision isn’t some extraordinary thing. It’s just my thing. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.31426215171813965}
Among the many witty responses to Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s confusion of “Gestapo” with “gazpacho,” one by Noel Casler, a stand-up comedian, stood out: “Sure the Gazpacho Police are bad but the elite Vichyssoise inspired puréed terror.” (Thanks to Ramin Dowlati of Danville, Calif., for nominating this.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9491064548492432}
As best I recall, I had never received a nomination that cited the magazine America, a Jesuit publication, so I was delighted to get this, regarding an article by Jim McDermott: “When we hold on to a story too tightly, or identify with it too fully, the gift we have been given becomes the god we worship. What was a source of liberation becomes our new jail. We’re Gollum screaming for our Precious.” (Diane Dugan, Philadelphia) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9216733574867249}
From The Guardian, here’s Marina Hyde on Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson: “As loyalists keep explaining, the P.M. is ‘rebooting’ his Downing Street operation. I love the idea that this full-scale meltdown can somehow be rebooted. Like standing in the ruins of the reactor building at Chernobyl and going, ‘Have you tried switching it off and on again?’” (Allan Tarlow, West Hollywood, Calif., and Eric Eales, Kelowna, British Columbia) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9559340476989746}
From the NPR website, here’s Glen Weldon, noting that his current television-watching habits recall those of some 20 years ago, when he was “working in bookstores” and “trying to make mock turtlenecks happen for me.” “All those bookstores I used to work in have closed,” he added. “Also I’m bald now, so mock turtlenecks just make me look like roll-on deodorant.” (Susan Sawatzky, Colorado Springs) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9850386381149292}
From The Atlantic, here’s Jennifer Senior about a withholding friend: “Her life was always fine, swell, just couldn’t be better, thanks. Talking with her was like playing strip poker with someone in a down parka.” (Susan Dixon, Kennewick, Wash., and David Schaps, Bnei Brak, Israel) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.970569372177124}
From The New Yorker, here’s Margaret Talbot on Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett and her ideological allies: “The America of 2022 is quite plainly not a country where citizens’ ability to worship freely is in jeopardy. Nor is the nation on the cusp of canceling gun rights. Yet the conservative justices often act as if they were alone in a broken elevator, jabbing the emergency button and hollering for help.” (Sally Corden, Madison, Wis., and Pete Browne, Kansas City, Mo.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9856922626495361}
From The Washington Post, here’s Damon Young in his debut column in the newspaper’s magazine, about getting doxxed by white supremacists: “If you’re sincerely paralyzed by the insipid monotony of existence, and feel like an arbitrary assemblage of galactic flotsam scudding toward the sweet nothingness of death, and need an anchor to remind you of the preciousness of life, try Be Black, Get doxxed.” (Kennetha Bigham-Tsai, East Lansing, Mich., and S.R. Cohen, Baltimore) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9732884764671326}
Finally, The Times! Here’s Wesley Morris on weeping at the movies: “What I’d felt was the ancient power of art to make a puddle of us. ‘E.T.’ led me into a love affair with being made to cry among strangers in the dark. I almost typed ‘being reduced to tears,’ except where is the reduction? Crying for art is an honor, an exaltation, a salute. It’s applause with mucus and salt.” (Jo Wollschlaeger, Portland, Ore., and Mary Allman-Koernig, Port Charlotte, Fla.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6544668078422546}
Here’s Molly Young on the new book “Love in the Time of Contagion” by Laura Kipnis: “For three of the book’s four essays, scooting around Kipnis’s mind feels like eating the world’s finest trail mix: no dud raisins to shift aside, only M&M’s and the fancier nuts.” (Barbara Buswell, Oakland, Calif.) {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.7498250603675842}
And here’s Maureen Dowd, wittily connecting President Richard Nixon’s nickname for some of his key aides with reports that President Donald Trump may have stuffed important papers into the toilet: “Nixon had the plumbers. Trump’s the one who needed them.” (Karen Shectman, Pittsboro, N.C., and Stan Seltzer, Trumansburg, N.Y., among others) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9789961576461792}
To nominate recent bits of writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here, and please include your name and place of residence. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.8912336230278015}
In the newsletter two weeks ago, I wrote about the cats in my past and mentioned Cupid, a male one, identifying him as a calico. Many of you wrote to me to suggest that I was almost certainly misguided, as calicos are very rarely male. (Some of you said that they’re never male, which contradicts this Business Insider article.) So was Cupid an oddity? I don’t know. I wrote “calico” based on a vague visual memory of him and was unaware of how specific the reference is. Cupid probably wasn’t an honest-to-goodness calico. But he was special all the same! My apologies for any sloppiness. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8234611749649048}
Many of you also wrote to chide me for another matter of misidentification, noting that I used the word “rhymes” for near rhymes in the most recent edition of For the Love of Lyrics. I was speaking — or, rather, writing — informally, and assumed that most readers would understand. But, yes, “man” and “land” don’t rhyme in the strictest sense. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9016870856285095}
Only one of you took issue with my use of “factoid” in last week’s newsletter. But that one of you — David Mayo of Fukuoka, Japan — had a point. “The word ‘factoid’ doesn’t mean a little fact, the way an asteroid is a little planet,” he wrote, noting that it denotes “the kind of false information that’s widely accepted as fact” and is analogous to “humanoid versus human being.” He’s right about its origin, though its meaning has apparently evolved to permit my deployment of it. He added: “For a little piece of accurate information, we may have to coin a word like ‘factette.’” So coined — but I’ll let him circulate it first. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9502068758010864}
He continued: “As I write, the Cincinnati Bengals have gone ahead on a 75-yard touchdown pass, and you’re on your way to being hailed as the second coming of Jimmy the Greek.” That was in reference to my prediction in the same newsletter that the Bengals would win the Super Bowl, and I have clearly emerged as the second coming of nothing more than another dreamer in thrall to the underdogs (or, in the Bengals’ case, undercats). I hereby own that — with pride. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9833910465240479}
A book is a kind of sequential tease. Every time you think you’re done, you’re not. You type the last word of the manuscript, attach the document to an email to your editor, press Send and breathe a titanic sigh of relief: Finished! At last! {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.46653005480766296}
Except you’re not. Not even close. Your editor has suggestions (which turn out to be a godsend) and questions (ditto). Proofreaders have more questions (and thanks for those, too). In the case of my new book, there were probably more proofreader questions and corrections than ever before. My odyssey with my eyes gave me a story to tell but made the telling of it — the typing of it — more difficult and prone to error. Joseph Heller would have appreciated that. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8190469145774841}
Then the box of 20 complimentary hardcovers lands at your front door, and there are still miles to go. If you’re lucky, booksellers, podcast hosts and others invite you to talk about your book. I am very lucky and will be doing some talking and want to share when and where with you. While a fuller, continually updated list exists on my website, here are some highlights: {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9613603353500366}
At 4 p.m. Eastern today, John Dickerson of CBS News and I will be talking live on Twitter (in what’s called a Twitter Space) about the book and more. You can listen in by going here, or you can find the conversation later through my Twitter profile or his. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.7129940986633301}
Talk about pinch-me territory: Next Tuesday evening (Feb. 22), I’ll be chatting with Oprah Winfrey for one of her “The Life You Want” classes — on the subject of vulnerability — on the Oprah Daily website. If you’re a subscriber, you can tune in here. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.8832281827926636}
In Manhattan on March 2, my Times colleague and dear friend Maureen Dowd will join me for an in-person and virtual event at the Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4440160095691681}
In Washington, D.C., on March 4, John King of CNN — who, as I mentioned earlier in this newsletter, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis more than a decade ago — will join me for an event at the Union Market location of Politics and Prose. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8048508763313293}
In Carrboro, N.C., on March 7, Molly Worthen, who contributes frequently to the Opinion section of The Times, will join me for an event at the ArtsCenter. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4302407503128052}
Apart from discussions of the book, I’ve been asked to deliver the commencement address this May at my alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. When I graduated in 1986, I certainly didn’t foresee this. Life metes out some brutal shocks. But also some lovely surprises. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9153140783309937}

It happens almost every day: A friend, an acquaintance or a complete stranger confides in me about a past struggle that only a few people in his or her life are privy to, about physical pain or emotional turmoil that almost nobody sees. It happened just the other day. Someone who’d always struck me as a portrait of unflappable confidence and unforced buoyancy told me for the first time about a medical misfortune that he suffered decades ago and repercussions from it that linger. I was surprised by the details of his hardship but not by the fact of it. His story is my story. My story is many people’s stories. Our outward calm veils inner turbulence. Much of the confidence we project is a camouflage we perfect. And when you admit to that, you’re blessed with others’ admissions. You join an informal community of people eager or at least willing to embrace the messy and liberating truth. I joined it after suddenly losing some of my eyesight several years ago, being told that I might go blind and then writing about that. My account seemed to resonate with readers in part because my condition exemplified a public-private disconnect. Nothing about my composure or appearance suggested trouble. I met my deadlines. I honored my obligations. My eyes looked the way they’d always looked. But they didn’t act the way they’d always acted. Never again would I read as fleetly and fluidly as before. Never again would I type with as much ease and as few errors. Evidence That was the bad part. The good? Never again would I trust that I knew anything important about someone — or, really, anything at all — from what was evident on the surface. Rebuttal I understand in a new and important way that struggle isn’t exceptional. It’s inevitable. It’s endemic. It’s our default setting. It’s just often hidden, and I wonder what life would be like if we all walked around wearing sandwich boards that listed what we’re enduring. What we’re surviving. What we’ve overcome. Concluding Statement That was the gist of an excerpt from my new book, “The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found,” that The Times published on Tuesday. (To add to that today, here’s a corresponding portion of the audio version of the book.) The excerpt comes from a chapter of “The Beauty of Dusk” titled “The Sandwich Board Theory of Life,” which posits that our moments of self-pity would be rarer and our capacity for empathy stronger if we knew the full truth of the people around us. Sometimes we simply can’t, but sometimes it’s a matter of looking more closely, listening more attentively, signaling an openness to that knowledge, asking the right questions. It entails a shift in perspective and a heightened awareness. Much has been written about the psychological impact of the honeyed lives that people project on Instagram, Facebook and other social media. Everyone’s at a party to which you haven’t been invited. Everyone’s children are excelling, everyone’s cakes are rising, everyone’s trip to Grand Cayman or the Grand Canyon was heaven on earth. Evidence But that’s only one set of dispatches and one way to read them. I take in different, or at least additional, information. I notice when the CNN anchor John King, who exhibits such preternatural poise and split-second decisiveness in front of those color-coded maps on election night, reveals that more than a decade ago, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Rebuttal “I remember like it was yesterday,” he said in an article by Emily Strohm in People magazine in November, mentioning “the first look at the M.R.I. and the lesions that look like little dried flowers running up the spinal cord and nerves.” “I was petrified,” he said. And he has lived ever since with the question of whether those lesions might someday impair him. I hear the “cancer” buried in a long story that someone is telling about her past and realize that while the word is rushing by for most listeners, the reality didn’t rush by for her and the fear of its recurrence is probably still present. I welcome the stories shared with me — by the record producer who, at the peak of his career, lost hearing in one ear, jeopardizing his livelihood, or by the Vietnam veteran who sometimes feels acutely self-conscious, all these decades later, about the prosthesis where his lower leg used to be. They’ve been met with mighty challenges, but those trials aren’t obvious to most of the people around them. Evidence And I accept that my compromised, imperiled vision isn’t some extraordinary thing. It’s just my thing. Claim Among the many witty responses to Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s confusion of “Gestapo” with “gazpacho,” one by Noel Casler, a stand-up comedian, stood out: “Sure the Gazpacho Police are bad but the elite Vichyssoise inspired puréed terror.” (Thanks to Ramin Dowlati of Danville, Calif., for nominating this.) As best I recall, I had never received a nomination that cited the magazine America, a Jesuit publication, so I was delighted to get this, regarding an article by Jim McDermott: “When we hold on to a story too tightly, or identify with it too fully, the gift we have been given becomes the god we worship. What was a source of liberation becomes our new jail. We’re Gollum screaming for our Precious.” (Diane Dugan, Philadelphia) From The Guardian, here’s Marina Hyde on Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson: “As loyalists keep explaining, the P.M. is ‘rebooting’ his Downing Street operation. I love the idea that this full-scale meltdown can somehow be rebooted. Like standing in the ruins of the reactor building at Chernobyl and going, ‘Have you tried switching it off and on again?’” (Allan Tarlow, West Hollywood, Calif., and Eric Eales, Kelowna, British Columbia) From the NPR website, here’s Glen Weldon, noting that his current television-watching habits recall those of some 20 years ago, when he was “working in bookstores” and “trying to make mock turtlenecks happen for me.” “All those bookstores I used to work in have closed,” he added. “Also I’m bald now, so mock turtlenecks just make me look like roll-on deodorant.” (Susan Sawatzky, Colorado Springs) From The Atlantic, here’s Jennifer Senior about a withholding friend: “Her life was always fine, swell, just couldn’t be better, thanks. Talking with her was like playing strip poker with someone in a down parka.” (Susan Dixon, Kennewick, Wash., and David Schaps, Bnei Brak, Israel) From The New Yorker, here’s Margaret Talbot on Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett and her ideological allies: “The America of 2022 is quite plainly not a country where citizens’ ability to worship freely is in jeopardy. Nor is the nation on the cusp of canceling gun rights. Yet the conservative justices often act as if they were alone in a broken elevator, jabbing the emergency button and hollering for help.” (Sally Corden, Madison, Wis., and Pete Browne, Kansas City, Mo.) From The Washington Post, here’s Damon Young in his debut column in the newspaper’s magazine, about getting doxxed by white supremacists: “If you’re sincerely paralyzed by the insipid monotony of existence, and feel like an arbitrary assemblage of galactic flotsam scudding toward the sweet nothingness of death, and need an anchor to remind you of the preciousness of life, try Be Black, Get doxxed.” (Kennetha Bigham-Tsai, East Lansing, Mich., and S.R. Cohen, Baltimore) Finally, The Times! Here’s Wesley Morris on weeping at the movies: “What I’d felt was the ancient power of art to make a puddle of us. ‘E.T.’ led me into a love affair with being made to cry among strangers in the dark. I almost typed ‘being reduced to tears,’ except where is the reduction? Crying for art is an honor, an exaltation, a salute. It’s applause with mucus and salt.” (Jo Wollschlaeger, Portland, Ore., and Mary Allman-Koernig, Port Charlotte, Fla.) Evidence Here’s Molly Young on the new book “Love in the Time of Contagion” by Laura Kipnis: “For three of the book’s four essays, scooting around Kipnis’s mind feels like eating the world’s finest trail mix: no dud raisins to shift aside, only M&M’s and the fancier nuts.” (Barbara Buswell, Oakland, Calif.) Lead And here’s Maureen Dowd, wittily connecting President Richard Nixon’s nickname for some of his key aides with reports that President Donald Trump may have stuffed important papers into the toilet: “Nixon had the plumbers. Trump’s the one who needed them.” (Karen Shectman, Pittsboro, N.C., and Stan Seltzer, Trumansburg, N.Y., among others) Evidence To nominate recent bits of writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here, and please include your name and place of residence. Concluding Statement In the newsletter two weeks ago, I wrote about the cats in my past and mentioned Cupid, a male one, identifying him as a calico. Many of you wrote to me to suggest that I was almost certainly misguided, as calicos are very rarely male. (Some of you said that they’re never male, which contradicts this Business Insider article.) So was Cupid an oddity? I don’t know. I wrote “calico” based on a vague visual memory of him and was unaware of how specific the reference is. Cupid probably wasn’t an honest-to-goodness calico. But he was special all the same! My apologies for any sloppiness. Many of you also wrote to chide me for another matter of misidentification, noting that I used the word “rhymes” for near rhymes in the most recent edition of For the Love of Lyrics. I was speaking — or, rather, writing — informally, and assumed that most readers would understand. But, yes, “man” and “land” don’t rhyme in the strictest sense. Only one of you took issue with my use of “factoid” in last week’s newsletter. But that one of you — David Mayo of Fukuoka, Japan — had a point. “The word ‘factoid’ doesn’t mean a little fact, the way an asteroid is a little planet,” he wrote, noting that it denotes “the kind of false information that’s widely accepted as fact” and is analogous to “humanoid versus human being.” He’s right about its origin, though its meaning has apparently evolved to permit my deployment of it. He added: “For a little piece of accurate information, we may have to coin a word like ‘factette.’” So coined — but I’ll let him circulate it first. He continued: “As I write, the Cincinnati Bengals have gone ahead on a 75-yard touchdown pass, and you’re on your way to being hailed as the second coming of Jimmy the Greek.” That was in reference to my prediction in the same newsletter that the Bengals would win the Super Bowl, and I have clearly emerged as the second coming of nothing more than another dreamer in thrall to the underdogs (or, in the Bengals’ case, undercats). I hereby own that — with pride. A book is a kind of sequential tease. Every time you think you’re done, you’re not. You type the last word of the manuscript, attach the document to an email to your editor, press Send and breathe a titanic sigh of relief: Finished! At last! Except you’re not. Not even close. Your editor has suggestions (which turn out to be a godsend) and questions (ditto). Proofreaders have more questions (and thanks for those, too). In the case of my new book, there were probably more proofreader questions and corrections than ever before. My odyssey with my eyes gave me a story to tell but made the telling of it — the typing of it — more difficult and prone to error. Joseph Heller would have appreciated that. Then the box of 20 complimentary hardcovers lands at your front door, and there are still miles to go. If you’re lucky, booksellers, podcast hosts and others invite you to talk about your book. I am very lucky and will be doing some talking and want to share when and where with you. While a fuller, continually updated list exists on my website, here are some highlights: Evidence At 4 p.m. Eastern today, John Dickerson of CBS News and I will be talking live on Twitter (in what’s called a Twitter Space) about the book and more. You can listen in by going here, or you can find the conversation later through my Twitter profile or his. Talk about pinch-me territory: Next Tuesday evening (Feb. 22), I’ll be chatting with Oprah Winfrey for one of her “The Life You Want” classes — on the subject of vulnerability — on the Oprah Daily website. If you’re a subscriber, you can tune in here. Lead In Manhattan on March 2, my Times colleague and dear friend Maureen Dowd will join me for an in-person and virtual event at the Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center. In Washington, D.C., on March 4, John King of CNN — who, as I mentioned earlier in this newsletter, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis more than a decade ago — will join me for an event at the Union Market location of Politics and Prose. In Carrboro, N.C., on March 7, Molly Worthen, who contributes frequently to the Opinion section of The Times, will join me for an event at the ArtsCenter. Apart from discussions of the book, I’ve been asked to deliver the commencement address this May at my alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. When I graduated in 1986, I certainly didn’t foresee this. Life metes out some brutal shocks. But also some lovely surprises. Evidence

nytimes\hearing-aids-fda.txt

Using custom data configuration default-874ed5e38df4c018

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-874ed5e38df4c018\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-874ed5e38df4c018\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. Here is a collection of past columns. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.7628713846206665}
My colleagues and I write a lot about failures of government and the horrors of technology. But this week we have good news. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.31057217717170715}
On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration started the process — after a long wait — to create a new category of government-approved hearing aids that Americans will be able to buy without a prescription. Congress authorized over-the-counter hearing aids in 2017. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.941742479801178}
These over-the-counter hearing aids have the potential to prove that the best efforts of government and technology companies can improve Americans’ lives. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6501889824867249}
You can buy reading glasses at Walgreens without a prescription. Perhaps by this time next year, you’ll be able to do the same with an officially labeled hearing aid at a cost of a few hundred dollars. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9499965310096741}
Medical professionals, patient advocates and tech executives that I’ve spoken with are excited about the potential of over-the-counter hearing aids. They imagine the government’s blessing will spark new inventions from companies like Bose, Best Buy and Apple. And they believe that this could be the start of a golden age for hearing help. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8255550861358643}
“I’m crying reading this,” Nicholas Reed, the director of audiology at the Johns Hopkins Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health, said he wrote to his contacts on Tuesday after hearing the news. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.48085105419158936}
When I wrote about this topic in April, I was surprised at the pernicious and widespread effects of hearing loss. Roughly 38 million American adults report some degree of hearing loss, and only a minority of people who could benefit from hearing aids use them. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7056514620780945}
Prescription hearing aids work well for many Americans, if they have access to medical care and can afford to pay an average of about $5,000. (Hearing aids are not typically covered by traditional Medicare. Coverage by private health insurance plans and Medicaid is spotty.) Some people also feel embarrassed about losing their hearing or are put off by tests and fittings for hearing aids. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9705003499984741}
Untreated hearing loss can be serious. Struggling to understand what we hear stresses the brain and is associated with cognitive decline, dementia and social isolation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.488725870847702}
Research by Dr. Reed and other academics found that some nonprescription hearing devices on the market for $350 or less — they can’t legally be called hearing aids at the moment — were almost as good as prescription hearing aids for people with mild-to-moderate hearing loss. But hearing helpers in this category can be excellent or garbage, and it has been difficult to tell the difference. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.91164231300354}
The best listening devices might win approval as official over-the-counter hearing aids under the new F.D.A. rules. Experts say that more companies are waiting in the wings to offer new hearing products. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7961208820343018}
Bose announced in May a hearing device for $850, and the company told me that it wants to sell the product as an over-the-counter hearing aid when the F.D.A. finalizes its rules. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Apple is studying ways to make its AirPods, which are wireless headphones, into a device to enhance hearing. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9874051213264465}
More gadgets don’t necessarily mean that more people will be helped by them. But the new market opportunity that the government created may open the door to ideas we can’t yet imagine, wholesale changes in public awareness of hearing loss and choices for treating it. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6189761757850647}
Dr. Reed tells me that he envisions that sleeker-looking and easier-to-use hearing aids can help erode the stigma of hearing loss and that new device manufacturers will offer more consumer education about the problem. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5134113430976868}
He and other experts also imagine more pathways for hearing assistance in addition to devices. Maybe there will be the equivalent of Best Buy’s Geek Squad to help people fit hearing aids that they buy without a prescription. If many more people seek hearing help, that could also mean more opportunities for health specialists who might offer hearing tests and treatments, separate from the devices. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.935389518737793}
People with more serious hearing loss may not be helped by an over-the-counter hearing aid. And even at a fraction of the cost of traditional hearing aids, many people still won’t be able to afford them. Some drafts of the domestic policy plan being batted around Congress propose an expansion of Medicare coverage to include hearing aids. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.908506453037262}
Health care in the United States costs more than it does in many rich countries and produces worse health outcomes. But at least in this one corner of health care, people may soon get more innovation and lower costs. Not bad. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5894467830657959}
Facebook is going to change its name. Okaaaay. The Verge reports that Facebook plans to reveal a new name for the company next week to incorporate its interest in the “metaverse,” a term for a broad vision that virtual human interactions will be as complex as the real thing. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6514446139335632}
Shifting from Hollywood tabloid to conspiracy theories: BuzzFeed News traced the evolution of Crazy Days and Nights from a celebrity gossip blog to a hub for QAnon conspiracy theories. “Gossip fans and QAnoners share a core belief: that behind closed doors, celebrities are doing unspeakable things,” BuzzFeed writes. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9799783825874329}
Talk to the world through your phone: My colleague J. D. Biersdorfer has advice on how to use your smartphone to converse in a language that you don’t know or to quickly translate a message or street sign. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.9524275064468384}
I love Gritty, the oddball mascot for the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team. Here is Gritty playing with a VERY EXCITED dog friend. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4211977422237396}
We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.39380958676338196}
If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. You can also read past On Tech columns. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.4619752764701843}

This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. Here is a collection of past columns. Lead My colleagues and I write a lot about failures of government and the horrors of technology. But this week we have good news. Claim On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration started the process — after a long wait — to create a new category of government-approved hearing aids that Americans will be able to buy without a prescription. Congress authorized over-the-counter hearing aids in 2017. Evidence These over-the-counter hearing aids have the potential to prove that the best efforts of government and technology companies can improve Americans’ lives. Claim You can buy reading glasses at Walgreens without a prescription. Perhaps by this time next year, you’ll be able to do the same with an officially labeled hearing aid at a cost of a few hundred dollars. Medical professionals, patient advocates and tech executives that I’ve spoken with are excited about the potential of over-the-counter hearing aids. They imagine the government’s blessing will spark new inventions from companies like Bose, Best Buy and Apple. And they believe that this could be the start of a golden age for hearing help. Evidence “I’m crying reading this,” Nicholas Reed, the director of audiology at the Johns Hopkins Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health, said he wrote to his contacts on Tuesday after hearing the news. Lead When I wrote about this topic in April, I was surprised at the pernicious and widespread effects of hearing loss. Roughly 38 million American adults report some degree of hearing loss, and only a minority of people who could benefit from hearing aids use them. Prescription hearing aids work well for many Americans, if they have access to medical care and can afford to pay an average of about $5,000. (Hearing aids are not typically covered by traditional Medicare. Coverage by private health insurance plans and Medicaid is spotty.) Some people also feel embarrassed about losing their hearing or are put off by tests and fittings for hearing aids. Untreated hearing loss can be serious. Struggling to understand what we hear stresses the brain and is associated with cognitive decline, dementia and social isolation. Research by Dr. Reed and other academics found that some nonprescription hearing devices on the market for $350 or less — they can’t legally be called hearing aids at the moment — were almost as good as prescription hearing aids for people with mild-to-moderate hearing loss. But hearing helpers in this category can be excellent or garbage, and it has been difficult to tell the difference. The best listening devices might win approval as official over-the-counter hearing aids under the new F.D.A. rules. Experts say that more companies are waiting in the wings to offer new hearing products. Bose announced in May a hearing device for $850, and the company told me that it wants to sell the product as an over-the-counter hearing aid when the F.D.A. finalizes its rules. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Apple is studying ways to make its AirPods, which are wireless headphones, into a device to enhance hearing. More gadgets don’t necessarily mean that more people will be helped by them. But the new market opportunity that the government created may open the door to ideas we can’t yet imagine, wholesale changes in public awareness of hearing loss and choices for treating it. Dr. Reed tells me that he envisions that sleeker-looking and easier-to-use hearing aids can help erode the stigma of hearing loss and that new device manufacturers will offer more consumer education about the problem. He and other experts also imagine more pathways for hearing assistance in addition to devices. Maybe there will be the equivalent of Best Buy’s Geek Squad to help people fit hearing aids that they buy without a prescription. If many more people seek hearing help, that could also mean more opportunities for health specialists who might offer hearing tests and treatments, separate from the devices. People with more serious hearing loss may not be helped by an over-the-counter hearing aid. And even at a fraction of the cost of traditional hearing aids, many people still won’t be able to afford them. Some drafts of the domestic policy plan being batted around Congress propose an expansion of Medicare coverage to include hearing aids. Health care in the United States costs more than it does in many rich countries and produces worse health outcomes. But at least in this one corner of health care, people may soon get more innovation and lower costs. Not bad. Facebook is going to change its name. Okaaaay. The Verge reports that Facebook plans to reveal a new name for the company next week to incorporate its interest in the “metaverse,” a term for a broad vision that virtual human interactions will be as complex as the real thing. Shifting from Hollywood tabloid to conspiracy theories: BuzzFeed News traced the evolution of Crazy Days and Nights from a celebrity gossip blog to a hub for QAnon conspiracy theories. “Gossip fans and QAnoners share a core belief: that behind closed doors, celebrities are doing unspeakable things,” BuzzFeed writes. Evidence Talk to the world through your phone: My colleague J. D. Biersdorfer has advice on how to use your smartphone to converse in a language that you don’t know or to quickly translate a message or street sign. Lead I love Gritty, the oddball mascot for the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team. Here is Gritty playing with a VERY EXCITED dog friend. We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. Evidence If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. You can also read past On Tech columns. Concluding Statement

nytimes\help-friend-support.txt

Using custom data configuration default-71936c54c6489131

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-71936c54c6489131\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-71936c54c6489131\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

A recent family crisis has taught me a lot about what it means to be a supportive friend. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7757871150970459}
My father, whose wife recently died, was briefly hospitalized himself in January, prompting me to board a plane, dog in tow, to aid his recovery. We both have many friends and colleagues who have called and texted with support. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8710840344429016}
How are you? What can I do to help? Any updates? {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.8450433015823364}
These are the sort of texts I myself have sent when I’ve reached out to a friend in need. What I’ve learned during this experience, though, is that many of those well-meaning calls and texts can sometimes be more of a burden than a help. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7424948811531067}
Today, I’m going to share some of the lessons I’ve learned from this experience. Here’s a short guide to the dos and don’ts of helping out. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.24069558084011078}
Do: Think twice before you call. I was surprised how often my father’s cellphone rang and how exhausting it was for him (and me). Often, the calls woke him from much-needed sleep. It made me realize that phone calls during a crisis, although well intentioned, can feel intrusive and tiring. Obviously, phone calls are appropriate in certain situations, but my advice is to avoid calling at the height of the illness or crisis if you can. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8074340224266052}
Don’t: Text for updates. Try to avoid sending a text that requires an answer. How are you holding up? How are you feeling? What’s the latest? If your text ends with a question mark, it puts the burden on the patient or caregiver to respond. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7616855502128601}
Do: Send a text of support. Texts are less intrusive than phone calls and can be read on our own time. The best texts have been those that shared thoughts of support, offers of help or links to an interesting article, a photo memory or funny video — and then ended with, “Just thinking of you. No need to reply.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.862374484539032}
Don’t: Ask people what they need. Many friends have kindly called or texted with the question: “What can I do to help?” But in the fog of illness and loss, it’s really hard to know what you might need, so most of the time we just said, “Thanks. We’ll let you know.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5048490762710571}
Do: Make a specific offer to help. Instead of asking what you can do to help, try making a specific, standing offer describing how you might be able to help. My colleague Karen Barrow, whose mother died recently, put it this way: “Don’t ask how to help — just help. Just send a meal or help with a chore.” Here are some examples of how to help when someone dies or is sick: {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.969268262386322}
I can help you write thank-you notes. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5121912956237793}
I’m happy to pick up the kids from school. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3883410096168518}
I’ll come walk the dog. {'label': 'Position', 'score': 0.4325242042541504}
I have a truck if you need help with moving or making donations. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5823416709899902}
I can run errands, shop, drive you to appointments or pick up prescriptions. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8208159804344177}
I made cabbage rolls (or stew, dumplings, lasagna or cookies). I’ll leave them on your porch. (Lots of food comes in the early days of a crisis; the meals a few weeks later often are a bigger help.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9869182705879211}
Do: Use the mail. When you are sick or grieving, finding a card in the mail is a bright spot in your day. For the caregiver, the walk to the mailbox is a welcome break. Surprise deliveries, like fruit or flowers, are nice, too, especially in the weeks after someone dies and the initial outpouring of support fades. Opening a package to discover a lemon cake shipped from Vermont was a true delight. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9794131517410278}
Do: Share a story. Social media can be a great source of comfort to a sick or grieving person. My dad has appreciated reading the comments people posted on his Facebook page, and has particularly enjoyed hearing stories and memories about his late wife. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.891299307346344}
Obviously, each person has his or her own needs and preferences. Phone calls may be unwelcome in a hospital room or during recovery at home, but much appreciated a month or two later. When I asked Well readers to share their insights about caregiving, the most common piece of advice was this: Let the patient lead. And that’s the biggest challenge for friends who want to show support — determining what each person or family needs for their specific situation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9816615581512451}
While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, my best advice is that small gestures matter. A card in the mail, a funny story that makes you laugh or a surprise lemon cake left on the porch will always be a bright moment in someone’s day. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.40603694319725037}
For more on caregiving, check out the Well Guide:How to Be a Caregiver {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.9464676380157471}
While I liked watching the Super Bowl last weekend with my family, I enjoyed “Superb Owl Sunday” even more. This breathtaking photo essay in The Atlantic magazine includes barn owls, burrowing owls, snowy owls and many more owls for your viewing pleasure. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8839432597160339}
Read more:See the owls of Superb Owl Sunday {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6140609383583069}
You’ll be impressed by the ingenuity of Chinese sports fans who create delightful nicknames — like Soup God, Frog Princess and Chen No. 3 — for their favorite Olympic athletes. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6636044383049011}
Learn more:Fly High, Frog Princess! Well Done, Chen No. 3! {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.31841030716896057}
Here are some stories you don’t want to miss: {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8104457855224609}
Knvul Sheikh has an update on Covid vaccines for young children. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8548851013183594}
Lisa Sanders has a medical mystery about a man who lost the ability to walk. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7752907276153564}
Jane Brody writes about the importance of accurate death certificates. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.739141047000885}
And of course, we have the Weekly Health Quiz. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7707057595252991}
Let’s keep the conversation going. Follow me on Facebook or Twitter for daily check-ins, or write to me at well_newsletter@nytimes.com. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.5238234400749207}
Stay well! {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.38431665301322937}

A recent family crisis has taught me a lot about what it means to be a supportive friend. Claim My father, whose wife recently died, was briefly hospitalized himself in January, prompting me to board a plane, dog in tow, to aid his recovery. We both have many friends and colleagues who have called and texted with support. Evidence How are you? What can I do to help? Any updates? Lead These are the sort of texts I myself have sent when I’ve reached out to a friend in need. What I’ve learned during this experience, though, is that many of those well-meaning calls and texts can sometimes be more of a burden than a help. Evidence Today, I’m going to share some of the lessons I’ve learned from this experience. Here’s a short guide to the dos and don’ts of helping out. Claim Do: Think twice before you call. I was surprised how often my father’s cellphone rang and how exhausting it was for him (and me). Often, the calls woke him from much-needed sleep. It made me realize that phone calls during a crisis, although well intentioned, can feel intrusive and tiring. Obviously, phone calls are appropriate in certain situations, but my advice is to avoid calling at the height of the illness or crisis if you can. Don’t: Text for updates. Try to avoid sending a text that requires an answer. How are you holding up? How are you feeling? What’s the latest? If your text ends with a question mark, it puts the burden on the patient or caregiver to respond. Do: Send a text of support. Texts are less intrusive than phone calls and can be read on our own time. The best texts have been those that shared thoughts of support, offers of help or links to an interesting article, a photo memory or funny video — and then ended with, “Just thinking of you. No need to reply.” Don’t: Ask people what they need. Many friends have kindly called or texted with the question: “What can I do to help?” But in the fog of illness and loss, it’s really hard to know what you might need, so most of the time we just said, “Thanks. We’ll let you know.” Do: Make a specific offer to help. Instead of asking what you can do to help, try making a specific, standing offer describing how you might be able to help. My colleague Karen Barrow, whose mother died recently, put it this way: “Don’t ask how to help — just help. Just send a meal or help with a chore.” Here are some examples of how to help when someone dies or is sick: Evidence I can help you write thank-you notes. I’m happy to pick up the kids from school. Claim I’ll come walk the dog. Position I have a truck if you need help with moving or making donations. Claim I can run errands, shop, drive you to appointments or pick up prescriptions. I made cabbage rolls (or stew, dumplings, lasagna or cookies). I’ll leave them on your porch. (Lots of food comes in the early days of a crisis; the meals a few weeks later often are a bigger help.) Do: Use the mail. When you are sick or grieving, finding a card in the mail is a bright spot in your day. For the caregiver, the walk to the mailbox is a welcome break. Surprise deliveries, like fruit or flowers, are nice, too, especially in the weeks after someone dies and the initial outpouring of support fades. Opening a package to discover a lemon cake shipped from Vermont was a true delight. Do: Share a story. Social media can be a great source of comfort to a sick or grieving person. My dad has appreciated reading the comments people posted on his Facebook page, and has particularly enjoyed hearing stories and memories about his late wife. Obviously, each person has his or her own needs and preferences. Phone calls may be unwelcome in a hospital room or during recovery at home, but much appreciated a month or two later. When I asked Well readers to share their insights about caregiving, the most common piece of advice was this: Let the patient lead. And that’s the biggest challenge for friends who want to show support — determining what each person or family needs for their specific situation. While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, my best advice is that small gestures matter. A card in the mail, a funny story that makes you laugh or a surprise lemon cake left on the porch will always be a bright moment in someone’s day. Evidence For more on caregiving, check out the Well Guide:How to Be a Caregiver Claim While I liked watching the Super Bowl last weekend with my family, I enjoyed “Superb Owl Sunday” even more. This breathtaking photo essay in The Atlantic magazine includes barn owls, burrowing owls, snowy owls and many more owls for your viewing pleasure. Evidence Read more:See the owls of Superb Owl Sunday Claim You’ll be impressed by the ingenuity of Chinese sports fans who create delightful nicknames — like Soup God, Frog Princess and Chen No. 3 — for their favorite Olympic athletes. Evidence Learn more:Fly High, Frog Princess! Well Done, Chen No. 3! Here are some stories you don’t want to miss: Knvul Sheikh has an update on Covid vaccines for young children. Lisa Sanders has a medical mystery about a man who lost the ability to walk. Jane Brody writes about the importance of accurate death certificates. And of course, we have the Weekly Health Quiz. Claim Let’s keep the conversation going. Follow me on Facebook or Twitter for daily check-ins, or write to me at well_newsletter@nytimes.com. Concluding Statement Stay well! Claim

nytimes\high-risk-covid-immunocompromised.txt

Using custom data configuration default-b14259ecddd3793a

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-b14259ecddd3793a\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-b14259ecddd3793a\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Denisse Takes’s world is very small these days. She makes a living by producing songs from her living room, plays “Animal Crossing” online with friends and leaves her home in Burbank, Calif., only occasionally to walk her dog. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6461986899375916}
Even as her social media feeds are flooded with friends and family members returning to their normal lives, she sees no one except for her husband, who donated his kidney in 2015 so that Ms. Takes, 37, could receive a compatible donor’s kidney in return. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8661664128303528}
The medication that keeps her immune system from rejecting the organ also suppresses it from creating antibodies in response to a coronavirus vaccine. Her body is so bad at fighting off infection that she has gone to the emergency room with common colds, she said. She fears that Covid-19 would kill her. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9884776473045349}
But the isolation and depression — amplified as the rest of the world seemingly moves on from the pandemic without her — have also taken their toll. “I keep trying to hold on for my husband, honestly,” Ms. Takes said. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8041750192642212}
Millions of Americans with weakened immune systems, disabilities or illnesses that make them especially vulnerable to the coronavirus have lived this way since March 2020, sequestering at home, keeping their children out of school and skipping medical care rather than risk exposure to the virus. And they have seethed over talk from politicians and public health experts that they perceive as minimizing the value of their lives. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9529192447662354}
As Year 3 of the pandemic approaches, with public support for precautions plummeting and governors of even the most liberal states moving to shed mask mandates, they find themselves coping with exhaustion and grief, rooted in the sense that their neighbors and leaders are willing to accept them as collateral damage in a return to normalcy. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6088699102401733}
“I can still see your world, but I live in a different world,” said Toby Cain, 31, of Decorah, Iowa, who has lymphatic cancer and went through six rounds of chemotherapy and radiation during the pandemic, making her especially vulnerable to Covid-19. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.820733904838562}
She lives alone, eats almost every meal alone and scrolls through social media alone, lamenting the family weddings and friends’ babies she has missed — at least until she quietly gave up on social media altogether. “It’s like living behind a veil while the rest of the world moves forward,” she said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9653456211090088}
More than seven million adults in the United States, or about 3 percent, are characterized by health professionals as immunocompromised because of a disease, medication or other treatment that weakens their body’s immune response, meaning that diseases such as Covid-19 can be more deadly to them, and that vaccines offer less protection. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7866242527961731}
Tens of millions more Americans have at least one medical condition, such as asthma or diabetes, that puts them at greater risk from Covid. How much greater can vary widely; many live with little worry, while others at higher risk have felt the need to isolate from society. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8716439604759216}
That is not what Aaron Vaughn, now 12, of East Lynne, Mo., hoped for when he received a heart transplant in June 2020. Born with half a heart, he thought a transplant would give him more freedom after years of long hospital stays. But with the virus still circulating, he has not been to school or a restaurant — his last trip was to Pizza Hut, his favorite at the time — since early 2020, and sees no one but his family and doctors. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9374150037765503}
“If I could go to school, that would be cool,” Aaron said, adding, “I can’t go anywhere except the hospital.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4222249388694763}
He is vaccinated, but because of the drugs he takes to stop his body from rejecting the heart, his doctors have told him to act like he is not. His siblings, also vaccinated, went back to school in person last month, but they wear masks, making them stand out in their conservative community, where roadside signs urge people not to get a coronavirus vaccine. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9851358532905579}
His parents said they had received hate mail for asking neighbors to wear masks or get vaccinated — some of the same neighbors who rallied around and prayed for Aaron when he needed a transplant. “It’s hard when people have turned something political, you know, that could kill my son,” said his mother, Sarah Vaughn. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.985958993434906}
The rollback of mask mandates in states such as New York, Illinois and California is the latest source of stress for vulnerable Americans, who fear that the rest of the country is shedding precautions without any consideration of how to keep them safe. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last week that it was too soon to abandon masks, in part because of the potential impact on vulnerable people, but the agency indicated on Wednesday that it would soon issue new guidelines. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.98918217420578}
“Having everyone mask indoors always is not a forever strategy,” said Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency physician and academic dean at the School of Public Health at Brown University, noting that immunocompromised people and others with vulnerabilities have always faced risks. But, she added, “We need to make sure that we have more stringent protections in place in places where people don’t have a choice about whether or not they go there.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8468355536460876}
The best protection in the long term, Dr. Ranney said, is to keep overall infections low: The less the virus is circulating, the less likely someone will be exposed. Vaccinating almost everyone would help, she said, but millions of Americans refuse, and not enough funding has been forthcoming for improved ventilation systems in public places. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7622925043106079}
The fear and anger felt by many high-risk Americans burst into public view last month in response to remarks from the C.D.C. director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky. Citing a study that said only 0.003 percent of vaccinated people had died of Covid-19, she told ABC News that 75 percent of those who had died despite vaccination had “at least four comorbidities, so, really, these are people who were unwell to begin with.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9862397313117981}
That drove Imani Barbarin, who has several conditions that put her at high risk, including cerebral palsy and diabetes, to create the hashtag #MyDisabledLifeIsWorthy on social media, generating an outpouring from other people angry over the government’s approach. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8714170455932617}
“We just truly want to survive this,” Ms. Barbarin, 31, said, “and we have seen a complete disregard for our needs, for our community and for our voices throughout this entire pandemic.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5921025276184082}
After a flood of criticism, Dr. Walensky apologized to disability advocates in a meeting and promised that senior C.D.C. officials would meet with them regularly. But Julia Bascom, the executive director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, who was in the meeting, said the comment reflected a familiar attitude: “That people with disabilities are just inevitably going to die, and those deaths are more understandable and less tragic.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9185705780982971}
Dr. Cameron Webb, the senior policy adviser for equity on the White House Covid-19 Response Team, said the backlash had led the Biden administration to re-examine its approach to people with vulnerabilities. “There’s a lot of pain,” he acknowledged, adding, “We want to do better.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8960047364234924}
He pointed to recent guidance from the Department of Health and Human Services saying that patients cannot be deprioritized on the basis of disability, even when hospitals enact crisis standards of care. He said the administration would announce more actions this week, including a working group of advocates. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9258595705032349}
Experts said there were ways government officials and the health care system could help vulnerable people without asking the rest of society to take stringent precautions indefinitely. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.44330811500549316}
Govind Persad, an assistant professor of health law at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law, suggested using federal pandemic relief money to upgrade ventilation in businesses and schools, making prophylactic antibody treatments such as Evusheld widely available to immunocompromised people, and managing the distribution of scarce antiviral medications so that they go to the highest-risk people, rather than those with the most resources to find them. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.895167350769043}
“It would be frustrating to have states fail to protect people at higher risk, and then try to frame things as an individual-individual trade-off between people who want to maintain mask requirements versus removing them,” Dr. Persad said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5869267582893372}
Ms. Cain, the cancer patient in Iowa, said the prophylactic antibodies seemed like her only chance to regain a semblance of normalcy, but supplies are very limited, even after Health Secretary Xavier Becerra announced on Monday that the United States would double its latest order. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.895638644695282}
“It’s extremely disheartening to see elected officials or other people in power minimize or miss the severity of the crisis we’re going through,” she said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4151536822319031}
In rural Missouri, 12-year-old Aaron spends his time in online classes, playing Minecraft or Call of Duty with friends, and making YouTube videos of himself trying spicy foods. His friends keep asking when he will come back to school, but he knows it will not be anytime soon. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9439494609832764}
For his parents, the loss of support from those around them continues to sting. “People say, ‘You’re living in fear,’” said Chad Vaughn, his father. “And I’m like, ‘You’re damn right I’m living in fear, and I’m tired of it.’” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9334462285041809}

Denisse Takes’s world is very small these days. She makes a living by producing songs from her living room, plays “Animal Crossing” online with friends and leaves her home in Burbank, Calif., only occasionally to walk her dog. Even as her social media feeds are flooded with friends and family members returning to their normal lives, she sees no one except for her husband, who donated his kidney in 2015 so that Ms. Takes, 37, could receive a compatible donor’s kidney in return. The medication that keeps her immune system from rejecting the organ also suppresses it from creating antibodies in response to a coronavirus vaccine. Her body is so bad at fighting off infection that she has gone to the emergency room with common colds, she said. She fears that Covid-19 would kill her. Evidence But the isolation and depression — amplified as the rest of the world seemingly moves on from the pandemic without her — have also taken their toll. “I keep trying to hold on for my husband, honestly,” Ms. Takes said. Rebuttal Millions of Americans with weakened immune systems, disabilities or illnesses that make them especially vulnerable to the coronavirus have lived this way since March 2020, sequestering at home, keeping their children out of school and skipping medical care rather than risk exposure to the virus. And they have seethed over talk from politicians and public health experts that they perceive as minimizing the value of their lives. As Year 3 of the pandemic approaches, with public support for precautions plummeting and governors of even the most liberal states moving to shed mask mandates, they find themselves coping with exhaustion and grief, rooted in the sense that their neighbors and leaders are willing to accept them as collateral damage in a return to normalcy. “I can still see your world, but I live in a different world,” said Toby Cain, 31, of Decorah, Iowa, who has lymphatic cancer and went through six rounds of chemotherapy and radiation during the pandemic, making her especially vulnerable to Covid-19. She lives alone, eats almost every meal alone and scrolls through social media alone, lamenting the family weddings and friends’ babies she has missed — at least until she quietly gave up on social media altogether. “It’s like living behind a veil while the rest of the world moves forward,” she said. More than seven million adults in the United States, or about 3 percent, are characterized by health professionals as immunocompromised because of a disease, medication or other treatment that weakens their body’s immune response, meaning that diseases such as Covid-19 can be more deadly to them, and that vaccines offer less protection. Tens of millions more Americans have at least one medical condition, such as asthma or diabetes, that puts them at greater risk from Covid. How much greater can vary widely; many live with little worry, while others at higher risk have felt the need to isolate from society. That is not what Aaron Vaughn, now 12, of East Lynne, Mo., hoped for when he received a heart transplant in June 2020. Born with half a heart, he thought a transplant would give him more freedom after years of long hospital stays. But with the virus still circulating, he has not been to school or a restaurant — his last trip was to Pizza Hut, his favorite at the time — since early 2020, and sees no one but his family and doctors. “If I could go to school, that would be cool,” Aaron said, adding, “I can’t go anywhere except the hospital.” He is vaccinated, but because of the drugs he takes to stop his body from rejecting the heart, his doctors have told him to act like he is not. His siblings, also vaccinated, went back to school in person last month, but they wear masks, making them stand out in their conservative community, where roadside signs urge people not to get a coronavirus vaccine. His parents said they had received hate mail for asking neighbors to wear masks or get vaccinated — some of the same neighbors who rallied around and prayed for Aaron when he needed a transplant. “It’s hard when people have turned something political, you know, that could kill my son,” said his mother, Sarah Vaughn. The rollback of mask mandates in states such as New York, Illinois and California is the latest source of stress for vulnerable Americans, who fear that the rest of the country is shedding precautions without any consideration of how to keep them safe. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last week that it was too soon to abandon masks, in part because of the potential impact on vulnerable people, but the agency indicated on Wednesday that it would soon issue new guidelines. “Having everyone mask indoors always is not a forever strategy,” said Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency physician and academic dean at the School of Public Health at Brown University, noting that immunocompromised people and others with vulnerabilities have always faced risks. But, she added, “We need to make sure that we have more stringent protections in place in places where people don’t have a choice about whether or not they go there.” The best protection in the long term, Dr. Ranney said, is to keep overall infections low: The less the virus is circulating, the less likely someone will be exposed. Vaccinating almost everyone would help, she said, but millions of Americans refuse, and not enough funding has been forthcoming for improved ventilation systems in public places. The fear and anger felt by many high-risk Americans burst into public view last month in response to remarks from the C.D.C. director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky. Citing a study that said only 0.003 percent of vaccinated people had died of Covid-19, she told ABC News that 75 percent of those who had died despite vaccination had “at least four comorbidities, so, really, these are people who were unwell to begin with.” That drove Imani Barbarin, who has several conditions that put her at high risk, including cerebral palsy and diabetes, to create the hashtag #MyDisabledLifeIsWorthy on social media, generating an outpouring from other people angry over the government’s approach. “We just truly want to survive this,” Ms. Barbarin, 31, said, “and we have seen a complete disregard for our needs, for our community and for our voices throughout this entire pandemic.” After a flood of criticism, Dr. Walensky apologized to disability advocates in a meeting and promised that senior C.D.C. officials would meet with them regularly. But Julia Bascom, the executive director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, who was in the meeting, said the comment reflected a familiar attitude: “That people with disabilities are just inevitably going to die, and those deaths are more understandable and less tragic.” Dr. Cameron Webb, the senior policy adviser for equity on the White House Covid-19 Response Team, said the backlash had led the Biden administration to re-examine its approach to people with vulnerabilities. “There’s a lot of pain,” he acknowledged, adding, “We want to do better.” He pointed to recent guidance from the Department of Health and Human Services saying that patients cannot be deprioritized on the basis of disability, even when hospitals enact crisis standards of care. He said the administration would announce more actions this week, including a working group of advocates. Evidence Experts said there were ways government officials and the health care system could help vulnerable people without asking the rest of society to take stringent precautions indefinitely. Counterclaim Govind Persad, an assistant professor of health law at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law, suggested using federal pandemic relief money to upgrade ventilation in businesses and schools, making prophylactic antibody treatments such as Evusheld widely available to immunocompromised people, and managing the distribution of scarce antiviral medications so that they go to the highest-risk people, rather than those with the most resources to find them. “It would be frustrating to have states fail to protect people at higher risk, and then try to frame things as an individual-individual trade-off between people who want to maintain mask requirements versus removing them,” Dr. Persad said. Ms. Cain, the cancer patient in Iowa, said the prophylactic antibodies seemed like her only chance to regain a semblance of normalcy, but supplies are very limited, even after Health Secretary Xavier Becerra announced on Monday that the United States would double its latest order. Evidence “It’s extremely disheartening to see elected officials or other people in power minimize or miss the severity of the crisis we’re going through,” she said. Claim In rural Missouri, 12-year-old Aaron spends his time in online classes, playing Minecraft or Call of Duty with friends, and making YouTube videos of himself trying spicy foods. His friends keep asking when he will come back to school, but he knows it will not be anytime soon. For his parents, the loss of support from those around them continues to sting. “People say, ‘You’re living in fear,’” said Chad Vaughn, his father. “And I’m like, ‘You’re damn right I’m living in fear, and I’m tired of it.’” Evidence

nytimes\home-buyer-risks-bad-credit-savings.txt

Using custom data configuration default-53e06ab7f0edc2df

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-53e06ab7f0edc2df\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-53e06ab7f0edc2df\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

The housing market was maddening for first-time buyers, even before the pandemic spurred a crush of sales last year. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8383710384368896}
The median U.S. sale price reached $346,900 in 2021, up almost 17 percent from the previous year and the highest on record, according to the National Association of Realtors, a trade group. And more existing homes sold last year — 6.12 million — than in any year since 2006, with nearly one in four going to all-cash buyers. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9846166372299194}
Now a number of companies ranging from billionaire-backed tech firms to nonprofit housing groups are competing in a small but quickly growing segment of the market with a shared pitch: Don’t go it alone. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4208487570285797}
A wide mix of partnership models offer potential home buyers deals that lie somewhere between ownership and renting. One or more parties (besides the mortgage company) has a stake in your home. For the person buying a home under these agreements, the end goal is the same — full ownership — but the paths vary, and can come with a number of trade-offs and risks. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9440529346466064}
The models include shared appreciation agreements, in which you borrow part of the down payment in exchange for a share of the home’s future value; rent-to-own leases, in which the tenant makes payments toward ownership; and limited-equity co-ops, a nonprofit approach for lower-income buyers with limits on the resale price of the home. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9700863361358643}
While they represent perhaps just 1 or 2 percent of the market, both private investors and nonprofits say they could soon become far more common as a means for first-time buyers to overcome their biggest obstacles: costly down payments, tight credit and bidding wars. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4522538483142853}
But some consumer groups worry that buyers may not fully grasp what they’re giving up in these partnerships, particularly with some of the private start-ups. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.8652365207672119}
Here is what to know about these models. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8282790184020996}
For buyers who can’t afford to plunk down a 20 percent down payment — the threshold at which buyers avoid costly mortgage insurance — a shared appreciation agreement might be an option. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6935252547264099}
Companies like Unison and Landed, both headquartered in San Francisco, will pay a portion of your down payment in exchange for a part of the home’s appreciation in value, either when you sell or refinance the home. If the property value has depreciated at the end of the contract, they share in the loss, reducing your total repayment. Unlike a mortgage, there is no monthly fee or fixed interest. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9881120920181274}
Dy Nguyen, a teacher, and her wife, Jen Foxworth, a police officer, both 38, bought a two-bedroom townhouse in the Mission district of San Francisco for $975,000 in 2018, with an equity contract from Landed. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9004150629043579}
The couple, who have two children and were renting a nearby one-bedroom apartment, tucked away savings for about five years and paid 10 percent of the down payment, $97,500. Landed matched their down payment, and the couple financed the rest of the purchase with an adjustable-rate loan. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9768425226211548}
In exchange, the couple agreed to pay back Landed’s investment, plus 25 percent of the home value appreciation when they sell, refinance, or buy them out. The contract must be paid within 30 years. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8418238759040833}
Most home buyers will buy out the company’s stake in the property within three to seven years, and 90 percent of them have chosen to refinance, rather than sell the home, said Alex Lofton, a founder of Landed. The company has entered about 1,000 of these contracts with buyers in 300 cities, with many in the Bay Area and Denver. Landed also operates in the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester County, and parts of Long Island, among other areas. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.993122398853302}
Landed currently offers the program to people in medical, education and civil service positions — essential workers who could keep up with mortgage payments, if they could just save up for a down payment, he said. Other companies, like Unison, have no restrictions on profession.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9076647162437439}
Last year, Mx. Nguyen and Mx. Foxworth refinanced their home and used the proceeds to pay back Landed’s initial investment of $97,500, plus about $6,000, because the home’s value had risen to $1 million, based on a third-party appraisal.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8970248103141785}
“I basically got a free down-payment loan,” Mx. Nguyen said, because they bought out the company’s share before the home’s value could balloon. “You want to take 25 percent of my appreciation? Great — I just wanted to get in the game.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9628564119338989}
But there are many variables that buyers need to consider, said Andrew G. Pizor, a lawyer with the National Consumer Law Center. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.841610848903656}
In terms of what the consumer will one day have to pay the lender, “it’s almost impossible to put a number on it,” he said, noting that the companies can seek anywhere from a few percentage points to most of the home’s appreciation, depending on the contract, and typically there is no dollar limit on their return. But since the companies operate in markets where prices are expected to continue to rise, it’s very unlikely that the homeowner will owe less than the initial amount borrowed, he said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9642667770385742}
In the event of default, some of the companies might move to sell the property, a process in which the resident may lose many of the rights afforded to someone entering foreclosure, like the opportunity for mediation and a minimum time frame for eviction, Mr. Pizor said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8958503007888794}
There can also be limitations on how much the homeowner can borrow against the property, and which renovations the companies deem valuable, when assessing your share of the appreciation, said Chris Mayer, a real estate professor at Columbia Business School. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.44895464181900024}
“Some of this is really all about the math,” he said, adding that the calculation can vary greatly, but can be beneficial in the right circumstances. “You’ve got to read the fine print.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6471962928771973}
Rent-to-own programs have been around for decades, with a long history of predatory practices. But a new batch of companies say they’ve corrected the industry’s worst tendencies.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4532475173473358}
One of the biggest players in the rent-to-own niche is Home Partners of America, which has purchased about 25,000 single-family homes since 2012, the company said. Last year, the investment firm Blackstone bought the company for $6 billion.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8840717077255249}
Divvy Homes, based in San Francisco, was founded in 2017, with funding from large venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz. In 2018, Landis, a New York-based company with a focus on lower-income renters, was founded; last year, it secured high-profile investments from Will Smith’s Dreamers VC and a company backed by Jay-Z’s Roc Nation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9348121881484985}
Designed for buyers who may not qualify for traditional lending, the companies buy a home on the client’s behalf, and then rent it back to them for a period of time, typically two or more years, until the tenant can qualify for a mortgage and buy the investor out. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7687345147132874}
In 2020, Janese Scott, 29, who works for a telecom company and is also a part-time mortgage loan officer, had a credit score of 560, too low for most lenders.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7849540710449219}
So she entered a lease contract with Divvy, in which the company bought her a two-bedroom townhouse in Lithonia, Ga., for $129,000, and she became their tenant. She was given three years to qualify for a mortgage to buy the house back, at a premium — $138,000 if she bought after the first 18 months.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9815826416015625}
But Ms. Scott got a mortgage in just five months, and bought the home for $133,500, an early-buyer discount.  {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8507797718048096}
To qualify for the rent-to-own contract, she paid a 2 percent down payment to move into the home, and also paid an above-market rent of $1,520, which included $255 toward home equity.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8387646079063416}
Working with financial coaches through Divvy, Ms. Scott said she paid down her debt, which mostly came from her previous marriage. After saving about $11,000, including the cash put toward the equity, she financed the home with a conventional 30-year loan. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9687915444374084}
The mortgage for the two-story home was $850 a month, cheaper than the apartment Ms. Scott had been renting for $1,200 a month in the Atlanta area for her and her 7-year-old daughter, Gabrielle. “It feels like a dream,” she said.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9677205085754395}
But her outcome has not been typical in the industry, said Abigail Staudt, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, where several rent-to-own businesses operate. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.9076316952705383}
“They think they’re investing long term in something that ends in homeownership, but it often ends up as tenancy,” she said, if the renter cannot qualify for a mortgage at the end of the contract. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5917026996612549}
Adena Hefets, a co-founder and chief executive of Divvy, said that about 47 percent of clients become homeowners at the end of the contract, while another 30 to 35 percent extend their lease. She would not say how many homes they have purchased, but said they have “helped thousands” of potential homeowners. They operate in nine states: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9881871342658997}
In the event that a tenant does not buy the home at the end of the contract, Divvy returns the extra payments made toward the equity, minus a fee equal to 2 percent of the purchase price — a significant change from older models, where tenants could stand to lose most or all of their investment. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7743362188339233}
But unexpected hardship could eat into that nest egg — unpaid rent may be collected from the tenant’s equity payments. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8307126760482788}
Landis, a competitor, said that 80 percent of their clients become homeowners, but declined to provide sales data. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.586205244064331}
The companies emphasize free financial coaching for clients, to help them qualify for homeownership, which has rarely been the case in past models. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7084437012672424}
Still, consumer protection groups are wary from past experience. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.5622417330741882}
“It’s a population that’s primed for exploitation,” said Reed Colfax, a partner at Relman Colfax, which is representing the plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against Rainbow Realty Group, a real estate company in Indianapolis. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7754128575325012}
In a separate case, James Hotka, the head of Rainbow Realty, said in 2013 that 70 percent of customers in their rent-to-own program “fail in the first six months.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5325444936752319}
All rent-to-own models are not the same, but consumers need to consider negative outcomes, said Sarah Bolling Mancini, a lawyer with the National Consumer Law Center. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4719027280807495}
“The question is, if you can’t get a mortgage now,” she said, “how can you be sure you can qualify in two or three years?” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5131149291992188}
Shared equity refers to a number of lower-income homeownership models designed to keep a property affordable not just for the current owner, but also future buyers. (To the chagrin of nonprofit housing groups, the term is also used to market for-profit models, like shared appreciation contracts.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8927411437034607}
In one version, limited-equity cooperatives, buyers purchase homes at deeply below-market prices, and pay monthly fees to maintain and improve the property. In exchange, the resale price of the unit is restricted — based on inflation or other measures. New York City has a version of this called Housing Development Fund Corporation, or H.D.F.C. co-ops.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9873658418655396}
Nery Peña, 27, a first-grade English teacher, bought a two-bedroom apartment in Washington, D.C., overlooking the Washington Monument, for $50,000 in 2021. Similar apartments nearby start at $350,000.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9735366702079773}
The building is part of the Douglass Community Land Trust, a portfolio of properties purchased by former tenants and nonprofit groups, where qualifying buyers typically make between 30 and 70 percent of the area median income. In D.C., that could mean a family of three making roughly $35,000 to $81,000 a year. The land trust also includes rental apartments. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9823744893074036}
Ms. Peña, whose family rented in the building before it converted to a co-op in the 1990s, cobbled together $15,000 from her savings and a gift from her mother, and financed another $35,000 through a credit union.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8689124584197998}
She pays $1,420 a month, including co-op fees; similar units nearby rent for twice that amount. If she decides to sell the home, the sales price will be restricted to her purchase price, $50,000, plus 3 percent for every year she stays.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9808363914489746}
“Honestly, I never thought it would be possible,” she said. “‘The majority of people who live here have known me since I was 2.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3043084740638733}
One of the model’s biggest problems is scale. There are about 250,000 households living in shared equity units in the United States, said Tony Pickett, the chief executive of Grounded Solutions Network, a national organization in that space. That includes about 1,200 H.D.F.C. co-ops in New York City. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7917249798774719}
“That’s minuscule,” he said. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.46902722120285034}
Finding lenders who will finance the loans is a challenge because the mortgages are generally smaller than those for market-rate homes. Grounded Solutions is aiming to reach 1 million households in the next 10 years, pushing for legislative changes that could make underwriting such loans easier. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8025487065315247}
The nature of limited-equity ownership also means that the buyers, often Black and Latino households, will gain less appreciation from their purchase than conventional homeowners. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8444385528564453}
But that is a trade-off that can still create more wealth for a family that would otherwise have remained renters, said Brett Theodos, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, a nonprofit policy group. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.9183430075645447}
In a 2019 study of 4,108 properties over three decades, the median wealth created for shared equity homeowners was $14,000, according to the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, a nonprofit think tank. And nearly 60 percent of those buyers went on to purchase market-rate homes. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.919439435005188}
Nonprofit models like community land trusts can also ensure affordability for subsequent buyers.  {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.9566329121589661}
Silvia Salazar, who works in research at the National Cancer Institute, has been a resident of another co-op in the Douglass Community Land Trust since 2001, when it was still a rental.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5287956595420837}
Since the building converted to a limited-equity co-op in 2011, she says management of the 83-unit building has improved, and units have remained affordable to a largely Latino buyer pool, many of whom work in restaurants and service jobs. Even after a surge in prices in the region fueled by the pandemic, sales at the building start at just $1,500 for a studio apartment, with monthly fees of around $1,100.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9810749888420105}
“It’s the permanent affordability that means everything,” she said about the shared equity model. “No matter how much our community gentrifies, we don’t have to worry about displacement.”  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5845109820365906}

The housing market was maddening for first-time buyers, even before the pandemic spurred a crush of sales last year. Claim The median U.S. sale price reached $346,900 in 2021, up almost 17 percent from the previous year and the highest on record, according to the National Association of Realtors, a trade group. And more existing homes sold last year — 6.12 million — than in any year since 2006, with nearly one in four going to all-cash buyers. Evidence Now a number of companies ranging from billionaire-backed tech firms to nonprofit housing groups are competing in a small but quickly growing segment of the market with a shared pitch: Don’t go it alone. Claim A wide mix of partnership models offer potential home buyers deals that lie somewhere between ownership and renting. One or more parties (besides the mortgage company) has a stake in your home. For the person buying a home under these agreements, the end goal is the same — full ownership — but the paths vary, and can come with a number of trade-offs and risks. The models include shared appreciation agreements, in which you borrow part of the down payment in exchange for a share of the home’s future value; rent-to-own leases, in which the tenant makes payments toward ownership; and limited-equity co-ops, a nonprofit approach for lower-income buyers with limits on the resale price of the home. While they represent perhaps just 1 or 2 percent of the market, both private investors and nonprofits say they could soon become far more common as a means for first-time buyers to overcome their biggest obstacles: costly down payments, tight credit and bidding wars. Evidence But some consumer groups worry that buyers may not fully grasp what they’re giving up in these partnerships, particularly with some of the private start-ups. Counterclaim Here is what to know about these models. Claim For buyers who can’t afford to plunk down a 20 percent down payment — the threshold at which buyers avoid costly mortgage insurance — a shared appreciation agreement might be an option. Companies like Unison and Landed, both headquartered in San Francisco, will pay a portion of your down payment in exchange for a part of the home’s appreciation in value, either when you sell or refinance the home. If the property value has depreciated at the end of the contract, they share in the loss, reducing your total repayment. Unlike a mortgage, there is no monthly fee or fixed interest. Dy Nguyen, a teacher, and her wife, Jen Foxworth, a police officer, both 38, bought a two-bedroom townhouse in the Mission district of San Francisco for $975,000 in 2018, with an equity contract from Landed. The couple, who have two children and were renting a nearby one-bedroom apartment, tucked away savings for about five years and paid 10 percent of the down payment, $97,500. Landed matched their down payment, and the couple financed the rest of the purchase with an adjustable-rate loan. In exchange, the couple agreed to pay back Landed’s investment, plus 25 percent of the home value appreciation when they sell, refinance, or buy them out. The contract must be paid within 30 years. Most home buyers will buy out the company’s stake in the property within three to seven years, and 90 percent of them have chosen to refinance, rather than sell the home, said Alex Lofton, a founder of Landed. The company has entered about 1,000 of these contracts with buyers in 300 cities, with many in the Bay Area and Denver. Landed also operates in the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester County, and parts of Long Island, among other areas. Landed currently offers the program to people in medical, education and civil service positions — essential workers who could keep up with mortgage payments, if they could just save up for a down payment, he said. Other companies, like Unison, have no restrictions on profession. Last year, Mx. Nguyen and Mx. Foxworth refinanced their home and used the proceeds to pay back Landed’s initial investment of $97,500, plus about $6,000, because the home’s value had risen to $1 million, based on a third-party appraisal. “I basically got a free down-payment loan,” Mx. Nguyen said, because they bought out the company’s share before the home’s value could balloon. “You want to take 25 percent of my appreciation? Great — I just wanted to get in the game.” Evidence But there are many variables that buyers need to consider, said Andrew G. Pizor, a lawyer with the National Consumer Law Center. Rebuttal In terms of what the consumer will one day have to pay the lender, “it’s almost impossible to put a number on it,” he said, noting that the companies can seek anywhere from a few percentage points to most of the home’s appreciation, depending on the contract, and typically there is no dollar limit on their return. But since the companies operate in markets where prices are expected to continue to rise, it’s very unlikely that the homeowner will owe less than the initial amount borrowed, he said. In the event of default, some of the companies might move to sell the property, a process in which the resident may lose many of the rights afforded to someone entering foreclosure, like the opportunity for mediation and a minimum time frame for eviction, Mr. Pizor said. There can also be limitations on how much the homeowner can borrow against the property, and which renovations the companies deem valuable, when assessing your share of the appreciation, said Chris Mayer, a real estate professor at Columbia Business School. “Some of this is really all about the math,” he said, adding that the calculation can vary greatly, but can be beneficial in the right circumstances. “You’ve got to read the fine print.” Rent-to-own programs have been around for decades, with a long history of predatory practices. But a new batch of companies say they’ve corrected the industry’s worst tendencies. One of the biggest players in the rent-to-own niche is Home Partners of America, which has purchased about 25,000 single-family homes since 2012, the company said. Last year, the investment firm Blackstone bought the company for $6 billion. Divvy Homes, based in San Francisco, was founded in 2017, with funding from large venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz. In 2018, Landis, a New York-based company with a focus on lower-income renters, was founded; last year, it secured high-profile investments from Will Smith’s Dreamers VC and a company backed by Jay-Z’s Roc Nation. Designed for buyers who may not qualify for traditional lending, the companies buy a home on the client’s behalf, and then rent it back to them for a period of time, typically two or more years, until the tenant can qualify for a mortgage and buy the investor out. In 2020, Janese Scott, 29, who works for a telecom company and is also a part-time mortgage loan officer, had a credit score of 560, too low for most lenders. So she entered a lease contract with Divvy, in which the company bought her a two-bedroom townhouse in Lithonia, Ga., for $129,000, and she became their tenant. She was given three years to qualify for a mortgage to buy the house back, at a premium — $138,000 if she bought after the first 18 months. Evidence But Ms. Scott got a mortgage in just five months, and bought the home for $133,500, an early-buyer discount. Rebuttal To qualify for the rent-to-own contract, she paid a 2 percent down payment to move into the home, and also paid an above-market rent of $1,520, which included $255 toward home equity. Working with financial coaches through Divvy, Ms. Scott said she paid down her debt, which mostly came from her previous marriage. After saving about $11,000, including the cash put toward the equity, she financed the home with a conventional 30-year loan. The mortgage for the two-story home was $850 a month, cheaper than the apartment Ms. Scott had been renting for $1,200 a month in the Atlanta area for her and her 7-year-old daughter, Gabrielle. “It feels like a dream,” she said. Evidence But her outcome has not been typical in the industry, said Abigail Staudt, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, where several rent-to-own businesses operate. Rebuttal “They think they’re investing long term in something that ends in homeownership, but it often ends up as tenancy,” she said, if the renter cannot qualify for a mortgage at the end of the contract. Adena Hefets, a co-founder and chief executive of Divvy, said that about 47 percent of clients become homeowners at the end of the contract, while another 30 to 35 percent extend their lease. She would not say how many homes they have purchased, but said they have “helped thousands” of potential homeowners. They operate in nine states: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas. In the event that a tenant does not buy the home at the end of the contract, Divvy returns the extra payments made toward the equity, minus a fee equal to 2 percent of the purchase price — a significant change from older models, where tenants could stand to lose most or all of their investment. Evidence But unexpected hardship could eat into that nest egg — unpaid rent may be collected from the tenant’s equity payments. Rebuttal Landis, a competitor, said that 80 percent of their clients become homeowners, but declined to provide sales data. The companies emphasize free financial coaching for clients, to help them qualify for homeownership, which has rarely been the case in past models. Claim Still, consumer protection groups are wary from past experience. Counterclaim “It’s a population that’s primed for exploitation,” said Reed Colfax, a partner at Relman Colfax, which is representing the plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against Rainbow Realty Group, a real estate company in Indianapolis. In a separate case, James Hotka, the head of Rainbow Realty, said in 2013 that 70 percent of customers in their rent-to-own program “fail in the first six months.” Evidence All rent-to-own models are not the same, but consumers need to consider negative outcomes, said Sarah Bolling Mancini, a lawyer with the National Consumer Law Center. “The question is, if you can’t get a mortgage now,” she said, “how can you be sure you can qualify in two or three years?” Claim Shared equity refers to a number of lower-income homeownership models designed to keep a property affordable not just for the current owner, but also future buyers. (To the chagrin of nonprofit housing groups, the term is also used to market for-profit models, like shared appreciation contracts.) In one version, limited-equity cooperatives, buyers purchase homes at deeply below-market prices, and pay monthly fees to maintain and improve the property. In exchange, the resale price of the unit is restricted — based on inflation or other measures. New York City has a version of this called Housing Development Fund Corporation, or H.D.F.C. co-ops. Nery Peña, 27, a first-grade English teacher, bought a two-bedroom apartment in Washington, D.C., overlooking the Washington Monument, for $50,000 in 2021. Similar apartments nearby start at $350,000. The building is part of the Douglass Community Land Trust, a portfolio of properties purchased by former tenants and nonprofit groups, where qualifying buyers typically make between 30 and 70 percent of the area median income. In D.C., that could mean a family of three making roughly $35,000 to $81,000 a year. The land trust also includes rental apartments. Ms. Peña, whose family rented in the building before it converted to a co-op in the 1990s, cobbled together $15,000 from her savings and a gift from her mother, and financed another $35,000 through a credit union. She pays $1,420 a month, including co-op fees; similar units nearby rent for twice that amount. If she decides to sell the home, the sales price will be restricted to her purchase price, $50,000, plus 3 percent for every year she stays. Evidence “Honestly, I never thought it would be possible,” she said. “‘The majority of people who live here have known me since I was 2.” Claim One of the model’s biggest problems is scale. There are about 250,000 households living in shared equity units in the United States, said Tony Pickett, the chief executive of Grounded Solutions Network, a national organization in that space. That includes about 1,200 H.D.F.C. co-ops in New York City. Evidence “That’s minuscule,” he said. Rebuttal Finding lenders who will finance the loans is a challenge because the mortgages are generally smaller than those for market-rate homes. Grounded Solutions is aiming to reach 1 million households in the next 10 years, pushing for legislative changes that could make underwriting such loans easier. Evidence The nature of limited-equity ownership also means that the buyers, often Black and Latino households, will gain less appreciation from their purchase than conventional homeowners. Claim But that is a trade-off that can still create more wealth for a family that would otherwise have remained renters, said Brett Theodos, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, a nonprofit policy group. Rebuttal In a 2019 study of 4,108 properties over three decades, the median wealth created for shared equity homeowners was $14,000, according to the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, a nonprofit think tank. And nearly 60 percent of those buyers went on to purchase market-rate homes. Evidence Nonprofit models like community land trusts can also ensure affordability for subsequent buyers. Claim Silvia Salazar, who works in research at the National Cancer Institute, has been a resident of another co-op in the Douglass Community Land Trust since 2001, when it was still a rental. Since the building converted to a limited-equity co-op in 2011, she says management of the 83-unit building has improved, and units have remained affordable to a largely Latino buyer pool, many of whom work in restaurants and service jobs. Even after a surge in prices in the region fueled by the pandemic, sales at the building start at just $1,500 for a studio apartment, with monthly fees of around $1,100. “It’s the permanent affordability that means everything,” she said about the shared equity model. “No matter how much our community gentrifies, we don’t have to worry about displacement.” Evidence

nytimes\homeless-people-subway-trains-mta.txt

Using custom data configuration default-bfbb26b2e1acb1a7

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-bfbb26b2e1acb1a7\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-bfbb26b2e1acb1a7\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul announced on Friday an aggressive plan to deploy police officers and mental-health workers into New York City’s subway, pledging to remove more than 1,000 homeless people who shelter there regularly, some of whom have contributed to escalating violence and harassment in the system. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9429720640182495}
Starting Monday, the officials said, there will be a zero-tolerance policy — enforced by the hundreds of officers who already patrol the system — for people sleeping sprawled across train seats or in stations, or for other violations of the subway’s often flouted rules of conduct, including littering, unruly behavior and lingering in a station for over an hour.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8936271071434021}
Dozens of mental-health professionals with the power to order the involuntary hospitalization of people who they deem a danger to themselves or others will be added to outreach teams systemwide. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5931465029716492}
“No more just doing whatever you want,” Mr. Adams said at a news conference at a Lower Manhattan subway station. “Those days are over. Swipe your MetroCard, ride the system, get off at your destination. That’s what this administration is saying.”  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7845086455345154}
The plan, which is aimed at ending the decades-old practice of people using the nation’s busiest transit system for shelter, comes as a spike in violent crime in the system, including several high-profile shoving incidents, has made public safety a paramount concern for many riders, with some saying it has caused them to avoid the subway. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6037917733192444}
Since plummeting at the onset of the pandemic, ridership been slow to rebound, recently reaching just over half of its prepandemic levels, and the system faces a perilous financial future. The subway’s long-term viability depends on more commuters returning. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6071099042892456}
The plan also comes in the wake of a horrific crime at the Times Square subway station last month, when a 40-year-old woman, Michelle Alyssa Go, was pushed in front of a train and a homeless man with a history of schizophrenia was charged with her murder. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6622263789176941}
Even as Mr. Adams acknowledged that “the vast majority of the unhoused and the mentally ill are not dangerous” to subway riders, his plan to evict those people from the transit system does not make such a distinction. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.48783212900161743}
In addition to the enforcement measures, which drew immediate criticism from advocates for homeless people, the plan also includes changes that are meant to more effectively connect homeless people, many of whom have mentally illness, substance abuse problems or both, to mental-health services and permanent housing. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6280794143676758}
In 2021, the rates of violent crime in the subway per million weekday passengers were up almost across the board compared with 2019. Felony assaults in the system were up nearly 25 percent, despite the pandemic-fueled drop in ridership. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9793683290481567}
Thirty people were pushed onto the tracks in 2021, up from 20 in 2019 and nine in 2017, the police said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7842499017715454}
“People tell me about their fear of using the system,” Mr. Adams said on Friday. “And we’re going to ensure that fear is not New York’s reality.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6254496574401855}
The announcement came from not only the mayor and governor, but also the transit agency’s leader, the police commissioner and city and state mental-health officials, underscoring the seriousness of the issue and the central role that officials believe the subway will play in reviving the city’s economy. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8272889256477356}
Jeffrey Gural, the chairman of GFP Real Estate, praised Mr. Adams’s approach. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4503078758716583}
“In order to get people to come back to the city, which is critical, people have to feel safe riding the subways because that’s how most of them commute,” said Mr. Gural, whose company owns several dozen buildings in the city. “It’s just that simple.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8423050045967102}
But the plan announced on Friday lacked some details and timelines, and given the chronic shortage of housing options that are palatable and affordable to most people who choose to live in the subway, it was unclear where those evicted en masse would immediately go, if not the streets. There was little discussion of the plan’s cost or how it would be paid. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8806999325752258}
Some advocates for transit riders said that an enforcement plan that integrated health care and supportive services was a positive step. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.9422701597213745}
“No one should feel they have to live in the subways, and being homeless is not a crime,” said Lisa Daglian, the executive director of the transit authority’s citizens’ advisory committee, a watchdog group. “However, there must be actions for these teams to take to be able to remove those who may do harm to themselves or others. This decades-long issue requires long-term investment to find a solution.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8479011058807373}
But Shelly Nortz, the deputy executive director for policy for the Coalition for the Homeless, said the plan would criminalize mental illness and homelessness. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.7316126227378845}
“Repeating the failed outreach-based policing strategies of the past will not end the suffering of homeless people bedding down on the subway,” she said in a statement. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.44546839594841003}
Ms. Nortz welcomed provisions of the plan that call for increasing the number of available psychiatric inpatient beds, shelters with private rooms and supportive housing, which comes with on-site social services. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4029667377471924}
But she was skeptical about expanding involuntary commitment at the cost of civil liberties, at a time when there is a desperate need for what she called “ready access to voluntary inpatient and outpatient psychiatric care, including medication.” {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8245297074317932}
Warren Oates, a homeless man who was taking refuge from the cold at the Times Square station on Friday afternoon, said the police should not force people out of the subway if they are not trespassing into restricted areas of the system. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6795224547386169}
Mr. Oates, who is in his 50s, said officers should be “not here to provoke” but rather to be “just here serving the law.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3835103213787079}
The precise number of people who live in the subway is unknown, but an annual survey in January 2021 estimated the figure at about 1,300 — and that was during the time when the system closed down for four hours every night for disinfecting. The number of homeless people in the system is believed to have increased since then. It was estimated at about 1,700 in January 2020, before the pandemic. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9832502007484436}
The city had already increased the police presence in the subway this year, deploying 1,000 additional officers to the system in early January. A week later, two officers were on the opposite end of the platform when Ms. Go was pushed to her death. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9261020421981812}
The mayor’s directive that officers enforce the code of conduct was an implicit acknowledgment that the Police Department had not been doing so rigorously. Mr. Adams said officers had been getting mixed messages on the subject: encouragement to enforce the rules, and condemnation when their efforts were captured on video and circulated on social media. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9671052694320679}
“I got your backs,” Mr. Adams, who was a transit officer himself. “Do your jobs. This is what you’re supposed to do.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4174576699733734}
The plan tries to address a frequent complaint from homeless people and their advocates that mere “outreach,” in which a homeless person is typically offered a room in a barrackslike group shelter — an offer that is usually declined — is insufficient. The plan calls for the creation of about 500 new beds in private rooms. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9476829767227173}
Police officers will form teams with outreach workers and clinicians that will canvass stations and trains to steer homeless and mentally ill people out of the transit system and toward help, bringing people to hospitals when warranted.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8963104486465454}
The teams — there will be up to 30 — will focus on high-priority stations and train lines where either ridership or reported crime have increased, Keechant Sewell, the police commissioner, said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.851690948009491}
The measures build on a state plan announced by Ms. Hochul last month to create similar “Safe Options Support” teams. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7337753772735596}
Taking broader aim at the problem of untreated mental illness, the plan calls for expanding the use of Kendra’s Law, which enables a judge to order someone into outpatient treatment. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7070660591125488}
The plan also calls on hospitals to reverse what has been a significant decrease in inpatient psychiatric beds over the past decade, which some experts say has contributed to the number of people with severe mental illness in the streets and the subway. Ms. Hochul said the state would increase Medicaid payments to hospitals for psychiatric beds. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9289448261260986}
And the plan addresses complaints from some organizations that serve homeless people that hospital emergency rooms refuse to admit some psychiatric patients they find too disruptive, or release them before they are stable or without adequate planning that would keep them from relapsing after being discharged. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7666518092155457}
Dr. Ann Marie T. Sullivan, the state mental health commissioner, said her agency would issue guidance to hospitals to ensure that the most severely ill patients — “a very small percentage of people” — are committed for longer stays. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7276903986930847}
“There are many rivers that feed the sea of homelessness,” Mr. Adams said, “and we have to dam every river if we are going to address this issue.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7095490097999573}

Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul announced on Friday an aggressive plan to deploy police officers and mental-health workers into New York City’s subway, pledging to remove more than 1,000 homeless people who shelter there regularly, some of whom have contributed to escalating violence and harassment in the system. Starting Monday, the officials said, there will be a zero-tolerance policy — enforced by the hundreds of officers who already patrol the system — for people sleeping sprawled across train seats or in stations, or for other violations of the subway’s often flouted rules of conduct, including littering, unruly behavior and lingering in a station for over an hour. Evidence Dozens of mental-health professionals with the power to order the involuntary hospitalization of people who they deem a danger to themselves or others will be added to outreach teams systemwide. Claim “No more just doing whatever you want,” Mr. Adams said at a news conference at a Lower Manhattan subway station. “Those days are over. Swipe your MetroCard, ride the system, get off at your destination. That’s what this administration is saying.” The plan, which is aimed at ending the decades-old practice of people using the nation’s busiest transit system for shelter, comes as a spike in violent crime in the system, including several high-profile shoving incidents, has made public safety a paramount concern for many riders, with some saying it has caused them to avoid the subway. Since plummeting at the onset of the pandemic, ridership been slow to rebound, recently reaching just over half of its prepandemic levels, and the system faces a perilous financial future. The subway’s long-term viability depends on more commuters returning. The plan also comes in the wake of a horrific crime at the Times Square subway station last month, when a 40-year-old woman, Michelle Alyssa Go, was pushed in front of a train and a homeless man with a history of schizophrenia was charged with her murder. Evidence Even as Mr. Adams acknowledged that “the vast majority of the unhoused and the mentally ill are not dangerous” to subway riders, his plan to evict those people from the transit system does not make such a distinction. In addition to the enforcement measures, which drew immediate criticism from advocates for homeless people, the plan also includes changes that are meant to more effectively connect homeless people, many of whom have mentally illness, substance abuse problems or both, to mental-health services and permanent housing. Claim In 2021, the rates of violent crime in the subway per million weekday passengers were up almost across the board compared with 2019. Felony assaults in the system were up nearly 25 percent, despite the pandemic-fueled drop in ridership. Thirty people were pushed onto the tracks in 2021, up from 20 in 2019 and nine in 2017, the police said. “People tell me about their fear of using the system,” Mr. Adams said on Friday. “And we’re going to ensure that fear is not New York’s reality.” The announcement came from not only the mayor and governor, but also the transit agency’s leader, the police commissioner and city and state mental-health officials, underscoring the seriousness of the issue and the central role that officials believe the subway will play in reviving the city’s economy. Evidence Jeffrey Gural, the chairman of GFP Real Estate, praised Mr. Adams’s approach. Claim “In order to get people to come back to the city, which is critical, people have to feel safe riding the subways because that’s how most of them commute,” said Mr. Gural, whose company owns several dozen buildings in the city. “It’s just that simple.” Evidence But the plan announced on Friday lacked some details and timelines, and given the chronic shortage of housing options that are palatable and affordable to most people who choose to live in the subway, it was unclear where those evicted en masse would immediately go, if not the streets. There was little discussion of the plan’s cost or how it would be paid. Rebuttal Some advocates for transit riders said that an enforcement plan that integrated health care and supportive services was a positive step. Counterclaim “No one should feel they have to live in the subways, and being homeless is not a crime,” said Lisa Daglian, the executive director of the transit authority’s citizens’ advisory committee, a watchdog group. “However, there must be actions for these teams to take to be able to remove those who may do harm to themselves or others. This decades-long issue requires long-term investment to find a solution.” Evidence But Shelly Nortz, the deputy executive director for policy for the Coalition for the Homeless, said the plan would criminalize mental illness and homelessness. Rebuttal “Repeating the failed outreach-based policing strategies of the past will not end the suffering of homeless people bedding down on the subway,” she said in a statement. Claim Ms. Nortz welcomed provisions of the plan that call for increasing the number of available psychiatric inpatient beds, shelters with private rooms and supportive housing, which comes with on-site social services. Evidence But she was skeptical about expanding involuntary commitment at the cost of civil liberties, at a time when there is a desperate need for what she called “ready access to voluntary inpatient and outpatient psychiatric care, including medication.” Rebuttal Warren Oates, a homeless man who was taking refuge from the cold at the Times Square station on Friday afternoon, said the police should not force people out of the subway if they are not trespassing into restricted areas of the system. Evidence Mr. Oates, who is in his 50s, said officers should be “not here to provoke” but rather to be “just here serving the law.” Claim The precise number of people who live in the subway is unknown, but an annual survey in January 2021 estimated the figure at about 1,300 — and that was during the time when the system closed down for four hours every night for disinfecting. The number of homeless people in the system is believed to have increased since then. It was estimated at about 1,700 in January 2020, before the pandemic. The city had already increased the police presence in the subway this year, deploying 1,000 additional officers to the system in early January. A week later, two officers were on the opposite end of the platform when Ms. Go was pushed to her death. The mayor’s directive that officers enforce the code of conduct was an implicit acknowledgment that the Police Department had not been doing so rigorously. Mr. Adams said officers had been getting mixed messages on the subject: encouragement to enforce the rules, and condemnation when their efforts were captured on video and circulated on social media. “I got your backs,” Mr. Adams, who was a transit officer himself. “Do your jobs. This is what you’re supposed to do.” The plan tries to address a frequent complaint from homeless people and their advocates that mere “outreach,” in which a homeless person is typically offered a room in a barrackslike group shelter — an offer that is usually declined — is insufficient. The plan calls for the creation of about 500 new beds in private rooms. Police officers will form teams with outreach workers and clinicians that will canvass stations and trains to steer homeless and mentally ill people out of the transit system and toward help, bringing people to hospitals when warranted. The teams — there will be up to 30 — will focus on high-priority stations and train lines where either ridership or reported crime have increased, Keechant Sewell, the police commissioner, said. Evidence The measures build on a state plan announced by Ms. Hochul last month to create similar “Safe Options Support” teams. Taking broader aim at the problem of untreated mental illness, the plan calls for expanding the use of Kendra’s Law, which enables a judge to order someone into outpatient treatment. Claim The plan also calls on hospitals to reverse what has been a significant decrease in inpatient psychiatric beds over the past decade, which some experts say has contributed to the number of people with severe mental illness in the streets and the subway. Ms. Hochul said the state would increase Medicaid payments to hospitals for psychiatric beds. And the plan addresses complaints from some organizations that serve homeless people that hospital emergency rooms refuse to admit some psychiatric patients they find too disruptive, or release them before they are stable or without adequate planning that would keep them from relapsing after being discharged. Dr. Ann Marie T. Sullivan, the state mental health commissioner, said her agency would issue guidance to hospitals to ensure that the most severely ill patients — “a very small percentage of people” — are committed for longer stays. “There are many rivers that feed the sea of homelessness,” Mr. Adams said, “and we have to dam every river if we are going to address this issue.” Evidence

nytimes\how-excited-are-you-about-the-metaverse.txt

Using custom data configuration default-ceaba373eb99fcb9

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-ceaba373eb99fcb9\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-ceaba373eb99fcb9\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Imagine living a virtual reality world where you can have your avatar play video games, shop, hang out with friends, attend concerts and weddings and even travel the world — all without leaving your home. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.5994582772254944}
Or imagine walking down the street and checking the latest sports scores from a digital display that floats in front of you. Or sitting in class with students who are right next to you — and others who are not.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8171373009681702}
These are just a few of the scenarios envisioned in a future metaverse, a fully realized digital world that exists beyond the one in which we live. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.6297931671142578}
Do you find the idea intriguing? Exciting? Scary? Are you looking forward to a future when we are always hooked into a virtual world? Or do you fear it will be a dystopian nightmare? {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.9751518368721008}
In “What’s All the Hype About the Metaverse?,” Brian X. Chen writes: {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6011162400245667}
The term “metaverse” is everywhere. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7112748622894287}
On Tuesday, Microsoft cited the so-called metaverse as a reason for acquiring the game developer Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, saying the deal would provide “building blocks for the metaverse.” Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has also bet on the metaverse and renamed his social networking company Meta. Google has worked on metaverse-related technology for years. And Apple has its own related devices in the works. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9923776388168335}
But what does the metaverse really mean, and does it even exist? Here’s what you need to know. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8782995939254761}
What is the metaverse, anyway? {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8068640232086182}
The metaverse is the convergence of two ideas that have been around for many years: virtual reality and a digital second life. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5103964805603027}
For decades, technologists have dreamed of an era when our virtual lives play as important a role as our physical realities. In theory, we would spend lots of time interacting with our friends and colleagues in virtual space. As a result, we would spend money there, too, on outfits and objects for our digital avatars. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.64349764585495}
In what techies like Mr. Zuckerberg call the metaverse, virtual reality serves as a computing platform for living a second life online. In virtual reality, you wear a headset that immerses you in a 3-D environment. You carry motion-sensing controllers to interact with virtual objects and use a microphone to communicate with others. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8047229051589966}
Matthew Ball, a venture capitalist who has written extensively about the topic, said the metaverse represented the fourth wave to computers, following mainframe computing, personal computing and mobile computing. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.49681535363197327}
“It’s moving into what people call ambient computing,” he said about the metaverse. “It’s about being within the computer rather than accessing the computer. It’s about being always online rather than always having access to an online world.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4980068802833557}
That’s it? It’s you and your avatar interacting with others in a digital environment? {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.39559024572372437}
To put it simply, yes. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.5122665166854858}
Does the metaverse already exist in gaming? {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.5538963675498962}
To some extent, there is already a metaverse in games. But — and it’s an important but — it’s rudimentary. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.45675674080848694}
Some social elements of the metaverse can already be found in video games. Consider Fortnite, an online shooter game played on computers, game consoles and mobile devices. The average Fortnite player spends hundreds of hours in the game with a personal avatar, fighting with and interacting with the avatars of other players. Players also accrue virtual currency that unlocks outfits and other goodies to customize their avatars. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9821056127548218}
Students, read the entire article, then tell us: {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8862226605415344}
How excited are you about the metaverse? Are you looking forward to a time when you can be hooked into a digital world 24 hours a day? Is the prospect of a fully virtual life more compelling than our current physical and material one? In your opinion, will the metaverse become a digital utopia — or dystopian nightmare? {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.9554476737976074}
While there’s no single definition or agreed-upon vision of the metaverse, if it does come to fruition, what would you like to see in it? What would you hope it wouldn’t be? {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3729725778102875}
Does the article change your understanding of, or interest in, the metaverse? What aspect described in the article was most fascinating, intriguing or enticing? Do you think Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard will hasten the arrival of the metaverse? {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.9392838478088379}
How much time do you currently spend in digital or virtual spaces? What kinds of things do you do there? Have you played video games like Roblox and Fortnite that might be described as metaverse adjacent, since players can build their own worlds and spend real money to customize their virtual avatars? If so, do your experiences make you more optimistic about a full-blown future metaverse reality? {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.8559036254882812}
What concerns do you have about the metaverse? In “The Metaverse’s Dark Side: Here Come Harassment and Assaults,” Sheera Frenkel and Kellen Browning write: {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.6492642164230347}
Yet even as tech giants bet big on the concept, questions about the metaverse’s safety have surfaced. Harassment, assaults, bullying and hate speech already run rampant in virtual reality games, which are part of the metaverse, and there are few mechanisms to easily report the misbehavior, researchers said. In one popular virtual reality game, VRChat, a violating incident occurs about once every seven minutes, according to the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.39387932419776917}
How concerned should we be about negative behaviors like harassment and hate speech in the metaverse? Does any of what Ms. Frenkel and Mr. Browning describe resonate with your own experiences in digital and virtual spaces? What do you think could or should be done to prevent them? {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.7403269410133362}
Make a prediction: Will the metaverse ever become a reality? If so, when do you think it may arrive? In 10, 50 or 100 years? Or should we be skeptical of all the hype — at least for now? {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.3840133249759674}

Imagine living a virtual reality world where you can have your avatar play video games, shop, hang out with friends, attend concerts and weddings and even travel the world — all without leaving your home. Lead Or imagine walking down the street and checking the latest sports scores from a digital display that floats in front of you. Or sitting in class with students who are right next to you — and others who are not. Evidence These are just a few of the scenarios envisioned in a future metaverse, a fully realized digital world that exists beyond the one in which we live. Concluding Statement Do you find the idea intriguing? Exciting? Scary? Are you looking forward to a future when we are always hooked into a virtual world? Or do you fear it will be a dystopian nightmare? Lead In “What’s All the Hype About the Metaverse?,” Brian X. Chen writes: The term “metaverse” is everywhere. Claim On Tuesday, Microsoft cited the so-called metaverse as a reason for acquiring the game developer Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, saying the deal would provide “building blocks for the metaverse.” Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has also bet on the metaverse and renamed his social networking company Meta. Google has worked on metaverse-related technology for years. And Apple has its own related devices in the works. Evidence But what does the metaverse really mean, and does it even exist? Here’s what you need to know. Rebuttal What is the metaverse, anyway? The metaverse is the convergence of two ideas that have been around for many years: virtual reality and a digital second life. Claim For decades, technologists have dreamed of an era when our virtual lives play as important a role as our physical realities. In theory, we would spend lots of time interacting with our friends and colleagues in virtual space. As a result, we would spend money there, too, on outfits and objects for our digital avatars. Lead In what techies like Mr. Zuckerberg call the metaverse, virtual reality serves as a computing platform for living a second life online. In virtual reality, you wear a headset that immerses you in a 3-D environment. You carry motion-sensing controllers to interact with virtual objects and use a microphone to communicate with others. Matthew Ball, a venture capitalist who has written extensively about the topic, said the metaverse represented the fourth wave to computers, following mainframe computing, personal computing and mobile computing. “It’s moving into what people call ambient computing,” he said about the metaverse. “It’s about being within the computer rather than accessing the computer. It’s about being always online rather than always having access to an online world.” Evidence That’s it? It’s you and your avatar interacting with others in a digital environment? Claim To put it simply, yes. Rebuttal Does the metaverse already exist in gaming? Lead To some extent, there is already a metaverse in games. But — and it’s an important but — it’s rudimentary. Claim Some social elements of the metaverse can already be found in video games. Consider Fortnite, an online shooter game played on computers, game consoles and mobile devices. The average Fortnite player spends hundreds of hours in the game with a personal avatar, fighting with and interacting with the avatars of other players. Players also accrue virtual currency that unlocks outfits and other goodies to customize their avatars. Evidence Students, read the entire article, then tell us: Claim How excited are you about the metaverse? Are you looking forward to a time when you can be hooked into a digital world 24 hours a day? Is the prospect of a fully virtual life more compelling than our current physical and material one? In your opinion, will the metaverse become a digital utopia — or dystopian nightmare? Lead While there’s no single definition or agreed-upon vision of the metaverse, if it does come to fruition, what would you like to see in it? What would you hope it wouldn’t be? Claim Does the article change your understanding of, or interest in, the metaverse? What aspect described in the article was most fascinating, intriguing or enticing? Do you think Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard will hasten the arrival of the metaverse? How much time do you currently spend in digital or virtual spaces? What kinds of things do you do there? Have you played video games like Roblox and Fortnite that might be described as metaverse adjacent, since players can build their own worlds and spend real money to customize their virtual avatars? If so, do your experiences make you more optimistic about a full-blown future metaverse reality? What concerns do you have about the metaverse? In “The Metaverse’s Dark Side: Here Come Harassment and Assaults,” Sheera Frenkel and Kellen Browning write: Lead Yet even as tech giants bet big on the concept, questions about the metaverse’s safety have surfaced. Harassment, assaults, bullying and hate speech already run rampant in virtual reality games, which are part of the metaverse, and there are few mechanisms to easily report the misbehavior, researchers said. In one popular virtual reality game, VRChat, a violating incident occurs about once every seven minutes, according to the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate. Rebuttal How concerned should we be about negative behaviors like harassment and hate speech in the metaverse? Does any of what Ms. Frenkel and Mr. Browning describe resonate with your own experiences in digital and virtual spaces? What do you think could or should be done to prevent them? Make a prediction: Will the metaverse ever become a reality? If so, when do you think it may arrive? In 10, 50 or 100 years? Or should we be skeptical of all the hype — at least for now? Lead

nytimes\inflation-supply-chain.txt

Using custom data configuration default-c58ad9715136184c

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-c58ad9715136184c\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-c58ad9715136184c\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

In an interview with Lester Holt of NBC last week, President Biden hewed closely to his talking points on inflation, which over the past 12 months has risen at its fastest rate in 40 years. “The reason for the inflation is the supply chains were cut off,” he insisted, as he has done several times before. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9473212361335754}
Well, no. That’s both simplistic and misleading. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8346660733222961}
For starters, the supply chains have not been “cut off,” just stretched. And supply issues are by no means the root cause of our inflation. Blaming inflation on supply lines is like complaining about your sweater keeping you too warm after you’ve added several logs to the fireplace. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9710797071456909}
The bulk of our supply problems are the product of an overstimulated economy, not the cause of it. Sure, there have been some Covid-related challenges, such as health-related worker shortages in factories and among transportation workers. But most of our supply problems have been homegrown: Americans have resumed spending freely, and along the way, they have been creating shortages akin to those in a shopping mall on Black Friday. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9680274128913879}
All that consumption has resulted from vast amounts of government rescue aid (including three rounds of stimulus checks) and substantial underspending by consumers during the lockdown phase of the Covid crisis. There has also been an unforeseen shift in what consumers are buying: With travel still sluggish and many people still wary of returning to entertainment venues, a hunk of purchasing has moved to goods — particularly “durables” like cars, electronics and building materials for housing — for which production and distribution capacity is limited. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9896706938743591}
It’s a classic economic case of “too much money chasing too few goods,” resulting in both higher prices and, given the extreme surge in demand, shortages. A spending increase of the magnitude we’re seeing — 25 percent on durable goods in 2021 over 2020, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis — would have challenged the capabilities of manufacturers under the best of circumstances. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9813843965530396}
Much has been made, for example, about the very real shortage of semiconductors. But that gap has occurred despite manufacturers delivering a staggering 1.15 trillion chips in 2021, handily eclipsing the previous annual record. That looks to me like a demand problem creating a supply problem. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.983775794506073}
And yes, when chips are in short supply, auto companies must curtail production and prices rise. I just ordered a new car and had to pay well above the sticker price (and face an indefinite wait). {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5506064295768738}
Among the ripple effects: a surge in used car prices, which are up 55 percent over January 2020 levels. Cars are not alone. Over that same period, furniture and bedding prices rose 19 percent and laundry equipment became 33 percent more expensive. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9763897657394409}
In this environment, shipping delays are hardly surprising. The Commerce Department reported last week that imports into the United States surged by almost 21 percent last year. No wonder that the volume of goods arriving at the port of Los Angeles hit record levels in 2021 — as did delays in unloading all the additional ships. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9839609861373901}
This is not to say that the current situation was easily foreseeable. While some economists warned of looming inflation, few anticipated the shift in spending and its effects. Also unexpected was the “Great Resignation,” the rise in people voluntarily leaving their jobs, as well as the decision by several million Americans to return to the labor force slowly or not at all as the pandemic waned. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6547972559928894}
The Great Resignation has created shortages of a different kind — labor shortages — in the service sector, both for businesses for which demand remains mixed (like restaurants) and those for which demand has increased during the pandemic (just try to get a plumber or an electrician to show up at your house). As a result, inflation in service prices, while more moderate than those in goods, remains higher than the Federal Reserve’s target of 2 percent. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9806367754936218}
Note to Mr. Biden: You can’t blame clogged ports for that. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5915576815605164}
What to do about all these shortages? Here again, Mr. Biden was misleading in his conversation with Mr. Holt. “We got Intel to come in and provide $20 billion to build a new facility,” he said, referring to a recent announcement by the chip manufacturer of a new semiconductor plant to come in Ohio. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8807837963104248}
Winning that new plant was a great accomplishment. But it’s not a solution to today’s problems; the plant isn’t scheduled to turn out its first chip until 2025. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.28059035539627075}
The real solution is more complicated. Some shortages will ebb naturally on their own, as consumers, having sated their thirst for adding that extra room on their house, return to more normal spending patterns. Other shortages will take longer to moderate and will require robust action, particularly by the Federal Reserve. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7121390104293823}
For its part, the White House needs to be more honest as it rolls out initiatives. It has promised robust antitrust enforcement, but while that is long overdue, it will have no discernible impact on competition or prices for years. And the high prices of meat and hearing aids, both of which Mr. Biden has vowed to address, are not at the heart of the current problem. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5970520973205566}
The Biden administration needs to shift its approach. In particular, with the economy steaming along, it should make deficit reduction as important as its other initiatives. (Smaller deficits reduce net spending by government, thus helping offset demand by consumers.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3548654615879059}
But here again, Mr. Biden has been disingenuous. His Build Back Better plan claims to be deficit neutral, but that assertion is made credible only by using the fuzziest math. Over the first five years, the plan would add about $750 billion to the deficit, according to an analysis of the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates. With this year’s fiscal gap estimated at $1.3 trillion, any new version of the plan should reduce the deficit substantially in its early years using honest math. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8535157442092896}
That’s how Bill Clinton pivoted after he took office in 1993: He unexpectedly raised taxes in his budget to address the pressing matter of the federal budget deficit. That decision served the country well — and ultimately also served him well. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8837331533432007}

In an interview with Lester Holt of NBC last week, President Biden hewed closely to his talking points on inflation, which over the past 12 months has risen at its fastest rate in 40 years. “The reason for the inflation is the supply chains were cut off,” he insisted, as he has done several times before. Evidence Well, no. That’s both simplistic and misleading. Rebuttal For starters, the supply chains have not been “cut off,” just stretched. And supply issues are by no means the root cause of our inflation. Blaming inflation on supply lines is like complaining about your sweater keeping you too warm after you’ve added several logs to the fireplace. The bulk of our supply problems are the product of an overstimulated economy, not the cause of it. Sure, there have been some Covid-related challenges, such as health-related worker shortages in factories and among transportation workers. But most of our supply problems have been homegrown: Americans have resumed spending freely, and along the way, they have been creating shortages akin to those in a shopping mall on Black Friday. All that consumption has resulted from vast amounts of government rescue aid (including three rounds of stimulus checks) and substantial underspending by consumers during the lockdown phase of the Covid crisis. There has also been an unforeseen shift in what consumers are buying: With travel still sluggish and many people still wary of returning to entertainment venues, a hunk of purchasing has moved to goods — particularly “durables” like cars, electronics and building materials for housing — for which production and distribution capacity is limited. It’s a classic economic case of “too much money chasing too few goods,” resulting in both higher prices and, given the extreme surge in demand, shortages. A spending increase of the magnitude we’re seeing — 25 percent on durable goods in 2021 over 2020, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis — would have challenged the capabilities of manufacturers under the best of circumstances. Much has been made, for example, about the very real shortage of semiconductors. But that gap has occurred despite manufacturers delivering a staggering 1.15 trillion chips in 2021, handily eclipsing the previous annual record. That looks to me like a demand problem creating a supply problem. And yes, when chips are in short supply, auto companies must curtail production and prices rise. I just ordered a new car and had to pay well above the sticker price (and face an indefinite wait). Among the ripple effects: a surge in used car prices, which are up 55 percent over January 2020 levels. Cars are not alone. Over that same period, furniture and bedding prices rose 19 percent and laundry equipment became 33 percent more expensive. In this environment, shipping delays are hardly surprising. The Commerce Department reported last week that imports into the United States surged by almost 21 percent last year. No wonder that the volume of goods arriving at the port of Los Angeles hit record levels in 2021 — as did delays in unloading all the additional ships. This is not to say that the current situation was easily foreseeable. While some economists warned of looming inflation, few anticipated the shift in spending and its effects. Also unexpected was the “Great Resignation,” the rise in people voluntarily leaving their jobs, as well as the decision by several million Americans to return to the labor force slowly or not at all as the pandemic waned. The Great Resignation has created shortages of a different kind — labor shortages — in the service sector, both for businesses for which demand remains mixed (like restaurants) and those for which demand has increased during the pandemic (just try to get a plumber or an electrician to show up at your house). As a result, inflation in service prices, while more moderate than those in goods, remains higher than the Federal Reserve’s target of 2 percent. Evidence Note to Mr. Biden: You can’t blame clogged ports for that. Claim What to do about all these shortages? Here again, Mr. Biden was misleading in his conversation with Mr. Holt. “We got Intel to come in and provide $20 billion to build a new facility,” he said, referring to a recent announcement by the chip manufacturer of a new semiconductor plant to come in Ohio. Evidence Winning that new plant was a great accomplishment. But it’s not a solution to today’s problems; the plant isn’t scheduled to turn out its first chip until 2025. Claim The real solution is more complicated. Some shortages will ebb naturally on their own, as consumers, having sated their thirst for adding that extra room on their house, return to more normal spending patterns. Other shortages will take longer to moderate and will require robust action, particularly by the Federal Reserve. For its part, the White House needs to be more honest as it rolls out initiatives. It has promised robust antitrust enforcement, but while that is long overdue, it will have no discernible impact on competition or prices for years. And the high prices of meat and hearing aids, both of which Mr. Biden has vowed to address, are not at the heart of the current problem. The Biden administration needs to shift its approach. In particular, with the economy steaming along, it should make deficit reduction as important as its other initiatives. (Smaller deficits reduce net spending by government, thus helping offset demand by consumers.) Evidence But here again, Mr. Biden has been disingenuous. His Build Back Better plan claims to be deficit neutral, but that assertion is made credible only by using the fuzziest math. Over the first five years, the plan would add about $750 billion to the deficit, according to an analysis of the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates. With this year’s fiscal gap estimated at $1.3 trillion, any new version of the plan should reduce the deficit substantially in its early years using honest math. Rebuttal That’s how Bill Clinton pivoted after he took office in 1993: He unexpectedly raised taxes in his budget to address the pressing matter of the federal budget deficit. That decision served the country well — and ultimately also served him well. Evidence

nytimes\inflation-us-consumer-surveys.txt

Using custom data configuration default-56fa749de6cedfad

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-56fa749de6cedfad\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-56fa749de6cedfad\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Good news on inflation has been hard to come by lately. But this week we got two encouraging reports from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — results from its latest Survey of Consumer Expectations, and an analysis of the recent behavior of inflation expectations by New York Fed economists. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8965890407562256}
Neither report had any bearing on the inflation we’re actually seeing, which continues (so far) to run hotter than it has for decades. Instead, they were all about the hypothetical future. Consumers, it turns out, don’t expect inflation to stay hot. Rather, they appear to believe it will continue for a while, then fade away. In fact, expected inflation over the medium term has actually come down over the past couple of months. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9342697262763977}
Furthermore, it’s unlikely that a few more bad numbers will create an inflation panic: Consumers appear much less likely to revise up their expectations of future inflation than they were in the past. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6666107773780823}
Why do we care? It’s not because consumers have some special wisdom, but because expected inflation can feed actual inflation. Actually, it can do that in two ways — although only one is relevant to our current situation. And the apparent fact that medium-term expectations of inflation aren’t rising greatly improves our chance of getting past this difficult episode without a lot of pain. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7296730279922485}
The irrelevant way expected inflation can matter, by the way, is through demand. When inflation is running high, consumers may rush to spend money before it loses its value. According to legend, when Germany experienced hyperinflation in the 1920s, patrons at beer halls would buy two beers at a time, because they expected the price of the second to rise while they were still drinking the first. When a government can’t stop inflationary money-printing, this urge to spend can lead to even higher inflation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.992035448551178}
As I said, this isn’t relevant to the current U.S. situation; no, we don’t need to print money to pay our bills. But we do need to keep an eye out for the possibility that inflation will become entrenched in the economy. What do we mean by that? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5446617007255554}
Some readers may want to avert their eyes: I’m about to write down an equation. For the past half-century, most policy-oriented macroeconomists have accepted the idea that the inflation rate is determined by a relationship that looks something like this: {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.7606558799743652}
Inflation = a – b × unemployment rate + expected inflation + other factors {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7229241728782654}
Why is expected inflation in there? Because in an economy in which everyone expects persistent inflation, companies setting prices or deciding what wages to offer will engage in a process of leapfrogging, raising their prices in the belief that other companies will also be raising their prices. I wrote more about that process here. And this in turn means that once people have come to expect persistent inflation, getting back to sustainably low inflation typically requires going through an extended period of high unemployment during which people keep seeing inflation lower than they expected, and gradually revise their expectations down. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9928268194198608}
For the past two decades or so, this hasn’t really been a concern, because expectations of inflation have become “anchored”: the public has come to expect low inflation as normal, and doesn’t react much to temporary ups and downs due to things like oil price fluctuations. The big concern about the inflation spike between 2021 and 2022 has been that inflation expectations might lose their anchor, making it much harder to get inflation back down once supply chains and all that are back to normal. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9689761996269226}
So is that happening? Not according to the New York Fed. Its survey of consumer expectations asks respondents what inflation rate they expect over both the short term — one year — and the medium term — three years. Here’s what that looks like: {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8169600367546082}
Medium-term expected inflation has come down recently, but the larger point is that it never rose nearly as much as short-term expectations. This tells us that consumers do expect higher inflation in the months ahead, but don’t expect it to persist — that is, expectations are still anchored. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9325369596481323}
The analysis by the New York Fed’s economists took things a step further, asking how short-term movements in actual inflation seemed to be affecting medium-term expectations. They found that expectations are much less sensitive to inflation data than they used to be — in effect, that consumers aren’t quick to revise their views about future inflation in response to recent news. This further supports the idea that expectations are still anchored. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9369320273399353}
All of this suggests that we should be optimistic about the possibility of a relatively painless end to our current inflation episode. But mightn’t we have said this about past inflations? Actually, no. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.6214460730552673}
U.S. inflation took two big steps down from its heights at the end of the 1970s: {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.875611424446106}
First came the Great Disinflation of the 1980s, which brought inflation down from around 10 to around 4 percent. This was a painful process, which involved a very severe double-dip recession. Then came a second disinflation in the early 1990s, which brought inflation down roughly from 4 percent to 2 percent. This involved a milder recession, but recovery from that recession was sluggish and unemployment stayed high for a long time — remember “It’s the economy, stupid”? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9944068193435669}
Unfortunately, the New York Fed survey doesn’t go back far enough to cover these episodes. However, the University of Michigan has been asking consumers about both short- and medium-term inflation since 1979. So we can use their survey to compare current consumer expectations with what they looked like at the start of those past disinflations. And they’re very different: {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.5473639369010925}
The message from this comparison is that expectations at the end of 2021 don’t look at all like 1980 or even 1990. Back then, inflation was entrenched in the sense that the public expected it to remain high over the medium term, and had to be convinced otherwise with years of high unemployment. This time, the public already expects inflation to subside to low levels within a year or so. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9475634694099426}
That doesn’t mean that policymakers can just stand by and rely on inflation to solve itself. An overheated economy could keep inflation high and un-anchor those expectations. So I believe that the Fed is right to be signaling plans to gradually raise interest rates, with the goal of cooling things off. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6117848753929138}
But the state of inflation expectations says that this process doesn’t have to be painful. If the Fed manages to get the right balance, we’ll be able to bring inflation down without a nasty economic slump. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8623124957084656}

Good news on inflation has been hard to come by lately. But this week we got two encouraging reports from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — results from its latest Survey of Consumer Expectations, and an analysis of the recent behavior of inflation expectations by New York Fed economists. Neither report had any bearing on the inflation we’re actually seeing, which continues (so far) to run hotter than it has for decades. Instead, they were all about the hypothetical future. Consumers, it turns out, don’t expect inflation to stay hot. Rather, they appear to believe it will continue for a while, then fade away. In fact, expected inflation over the medium term has actually come down over the past couple of months. Evidence Furthermore, it’s unlikely that a few more bad numbers will create an inflation panic: Consumers appear much less likely to revise up their expectations of future inflation than they were in the past. Claim Why do we care? It’s not because consumers have some special wisdom, but because expected inflation can feed actual inflation. Actually, it can do that in two ways — although only one is relevant to our current situation. And the apparent fact that medium-term expectations of inflation aren’t rising greatly improves our chance of getting past this difficult episode without a lot of pain. The irrelevant way expected inflation can matter, by the way, is through demand. When inflation is running high, consumers may rush to spend money before it loses its value. According to legend, when Germany experienced hyperinflation in the 1920s, patrons at beer halls would buy two beers at a time, because they expected the price of the second to rise while they were still drinking the first. When a government can’t stop inflationary money-printing, this urge to spend can lead to even higher inflation. As I said, this isn’t relevant to the current U.S. situation; no, we don’t need to print money to pay our bills. But we do need to keep an eye out for the possibility that inflation will become entrenched in the economy. What do we mean by that? Evidence Some readers may want to avert their eyes: I’m about to write down an equation. For the past half-century, most policy-oriented macroeconomists have accepted the idea that the inflation rate is determined by a relationship that looks something like this: Counterclaim Inflation = a – b × unemployment rate + expected inflation + other factors Claim Why is expected inflation in there? Because in an economy in which everyone expects persistent inflation, companies setting prices or deciding what wages to offer will engage in a process of leapfrogging, raising their prices in the belief that other companies will also be raising their prices. I wrote more about that process here. And this in turn means that once people have come to expect persistent inflation, getting back to sustainably low inflation typically requires going through an extended period of high unemployment during which people keep seeing inflation lower than they expected, and gradually revise their expectations down. For the past two decades or so, this hasn’t really been a concern, because expectations of inflation have become “anchored”: the public has come to expect low inflation as normal, and doesn’t react much to temporary ups and downs due to things like oil price fluctuations. The big concern about the inflation spike between 2021 and 2022 has been that inflation expectations might lose their anchor, making it much harder to get inflation back down once supply chains and all that are back to normal. So is that happening? Not according to the New York Fed. Its survey of consumer expectations asks respondents what inflation rate they expect over both the short term — one year — and the medium term — three years. Here’s what that looks like: Medium-term expected inflation has come down recently, but the larger point is that it never rose nearly as much as short-term expectations. This tells us that consumers do expect higher inflation in the months ahead, but don’t expect it to persist — that is, expectations are still anchored. The analysis by the New York Fed’s economists took things a step further, asking how short-term movements in actual inflation seemed to be affecting medium-term expectations. They found that expectations are much less sensitive to inflation data than they used to be — in effect, that consumers aren’t quick to revise their views about future inflation in response to recent news. This further supports the idea that expectations are still anchored. Evidence All of this suggests that we should be optimistic about the possibility of a relatively painless end to our current inflation episode. But mightn’t we have said this about past inflations? Actually, no. Concluding Statement U.S. inflation took two big steps down from its heights at the end of the 1970s: Claim First came the Great Disinflation of the 1980s, which brought inflation down from around 10 to around 4 percent. This was a painful process, which involved a very severe double-dip recession. Then came a second disinflation in the early 1990s, which brought inflation down roughly from 4 percent to 2 percent. This involved a milder recession, but recovery from that recession was sluggish and unemployment stayed high for a long time — remember “It’s the economy, stupid”? Evidence Unfortunately, the New York Fed survey doesn’t go back far enough to cover these episodes. However, the University of Michigan has been asking consumers about both short- and medium-term inflation since 1979. So we can use their survey to compare current consumer expectations with what they looked like at the start of those past disinflations. And they’re very different: Rebuttal The message from this comparison is that expectations at the end of 2021 don’t look at all like 1980 or even 1990. Back then, inflation was entrenched in the sense that the public expected it to remain high over the medium term, and had to be convinced otherwise with years of high unemployment. This time, the public already expects inflation to subside to low levels within a year or so. That doesn’t mean that policymakers can just stand by and rely on inflation to solve itself. An overheated economy could keep inflation high and un-anchor those expectations. So I believe that the Fed is right to be signaling plans to gradually raise interest rates, with the goal of cooling things off. Evidence But the state of inflation expectations says that this process doesn’t have to be painful. If the Fed manages to get the right balance, we’ll be able to bring inflation down without a nasty economic slump. Rebuttal

nytimes\jeff-koons-bmw.txt

Using custom data configuration default-30ea9c8a7ea4d9a8

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-30ea9c8a7ea4d9a8\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-30ea9c8a7ea4d9a8\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

In the late 2000s, when the artist Jeff Koons was asked to design a BMW Art Car, he considered three concepts. “I made Plan A, Plan B and Plan C,” Mr. Koons said. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.3918105363845825}
Since its establishment in 1975, the Art Car program has commissioned blue-chip artists — including Andy Warhol, Jenny Holzer, Robert Rauschenberg and Cao Fei — to create one-off iterations of a BMW vehicle, museum-quality pieces that are displayed or raced. The racecar that Mr. Koons unveiled in 2010 featured a windswept riot of brightly colored streaks. This design, he said, was Plan B. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9425411820411682}
Plan C did not maintain Mr. Koons’s interest, so he discarded it. But Plan A remained with him. “I wanted to make a car that, when it drove by, would go pop-pop-pop,” he said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4503190815448761}
Now, a dozen years later, he has brought that vision to life with the 8 by Jeff Koons, a limited edition of 99 specially designed and outfitted versions of BMW’s swoopy, four-door, 8-Series Gran Coupe sports sedan. This car was unveiled, virtually, on Wednesday in connection with the Frieze Los Angeles art fair, for which BMW is an official partner. In the United States, each example will cost $350,000. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9792605042457581}
BMW has had success with similar limited editions, including an intended (pandemic-interrupted) run of 500 M2 sports coupes designed by the artist Lenny McGurr, who is known as Futura, and a series of 150 M4 Competition sports coupes created with Ronnie Fieg of the streetwear brand Kith. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9566546678543091}
As one of the world’s best-known living artists, Mr. Koons lends cachet to the offering. “It’s good marketing for the company,” said Linda Yablonsky, an art critic and author of a coming biography of Mr. Koons. “But Jeff himself is really an evangelist for art. He wants to see art in everyone’s life. It doesn’t have to be his own, but he wants everybody to connect to art in some way because he believes it will do for them what it does for him — enhance their lives.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9463205933570862}
Discussions between BMW and Mr. Koons on production of a limited-edition vehicle for sale to the public date back more than a decade. But it was unclear what form this collaboration might take. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.4613289535045624}
“I thought it was going to be one of these balloon dog-colored cars — bright yellow, bright red, bright blue,” said Thomas Girst, BMW’s head of cultural engagement, referring to the artist’s signature high-gloss sculptures, executed in gleaming polished stainless steel. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6605738401412964}
Mr. Koons had a different idea in mind. “I started by working with kind of a rectangular design that became this kind of whoosh of air that I’ve incorporated, this emphasis of power. And I use other visual ways of communicating energy and velocity, and that excitement of movement,” he said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7214484214782715}
Yet the bold linear graphics, bright colors, and animated stars and explosions aren’t just superficial peacocking. “When I drive by and somebody says, ‘Hey, look at that,’ it’s not just about feathers being spread,” Mr. Koons said. “They see something that’s very visceral, and it’s visual.” {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.43136507272720337}
The design conveys a sense of vibrant emotionality, a fascination rooted in delight and joy. This sensibility carries over into the interior, with its harlequin-like arrangement of contrasting colors and textures, all chosen by Mr. Koons. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.39936575293540955}
The finishes are labor intensive. The paint on each car requires an 11-step process, including hand-painting. According to BMW, it is the most complex paint job ever rendered on one of its series production road cars, taking 300 hours to execute for each vehicle. (During one of Mr. Koons’s supervisory visits to the factory, according to Mr. Girst, the paint shop workers asked him to sign their atomizer. “And he did,” Mr. Girst said.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9924339056015015}
Mr. Koons has experimented with similar concepts, on a very different vehicle. “It’s a bit like the paint job he gave the Guilty, a yacht he designed for the Greek collector Dakis Joannou,” Ms. Yablonsky said. “Jeff based it on World War I, razzle-dazzle ship camouflage and combined that with a kind of homage to Roy Lichtenstein, one of his artistic heroes,” she continued. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9613877534866333}
“So the bright colors of this car, and the exploding, cartoonlike Pop graphics, are very much in keeping with his art,” she said. “And certainly, like Jeff himself, it’s very optimistic.” She added, “I’d be curious to see how it looks in motion.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7396189570426941}
Soon, Ms. Yablonsky, and other New Yorkers, will have this wish granted. In late March, Mr. Koons is scheduled to drive an 8 by Jeff Koons through Manhattan, dropping the car off at Rockefeller Center, where it will be on display from March 31 until April 4. At the end of the exhibition, this car will be auctioned off by Christie’s, with the proceeds donated to the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a charity Mr. Koons has frequently supported. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9853984117507935}
As a means of introducing the car to collectors around the world, further premieres are planned this spring and summer (without Mr. Koons) in the United Arab Emirates, Switzerland, Belgium, China, France and England. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7087353467941284}
“There’s already a lot of demand in the market, so we are confident of this car selling out, really quick,” Mr. Girst said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.45295417308807373}
Mr. Koons will also receive his own 8 by Jeff Koons. He said he looked forward to driving the car “in New York, and from New York to Pennsylvania,” where he maintains a weekend house — his grandfather’s farm. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8961615562438965}
This will be a significant change from his usual ride. Because Mr. Koons has eight children, and often travels with them, their friends, his wife and a nanny, he typically drives a 13-passenger Mercedes van. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8820773959159851}
“My kids say, ‘Dad, you should get yourself a sports car,’” he said. “But I like to be with my family. I have joy being with them.” As the 8-Series Gran Coupe has four seats, it will lend itself to such togetherness. “So I’ve ended up with the sports car that I can see myself driving,” he said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8172028064727783}
Does this vehicle rise to the level of art? “It’s a car envisioned by an artist,” Ms. Yablonsky said. “But it’s still a car. A functional object. Most art doesn’t function as anything but art.” {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.802410364151001}
BMW and Mr. Koons remain open to future cooperation. “I think the story with Jeff is definitely an ongoing one,” Mr. Girst said. “The future is certainly electric, so why not, without making any promises, why not explore this further? There are certainly new challenges moving forward with design for electric cars, and new ways for artists to assist in tackling these challenges.” {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.537211537361145}

In the late 2000s, when the artist Jeff Koons was asked to design a BMW Art Car, he considered three concepts. “I made Plan A, Plan B and Plan C,” Mr. Koons said. Lead Since its establishment in 1975, the Art Car program has commissioned blue-chip artists — including Andy Warhol, Jenny Holzer, Robert Rauschenberg and Cao Fei — to create one-off iterations of a BMW vehicle, museum-quality pieces that are displayed or raced. The racecar that Mr. Koons unveiled in 2010 featured a windswept riot of brightly colored streaks. This design, he said, was Plan B. Plan C did not maintain Mr. Koons’s interest, so he discarded it. But Plan A remained with him. “I wanted to make a car that, when it drove by, would go pop-pop-pop,” he said. Now, a dozen years later, he has brought that vision to life with the 8 by Jeff Koons, a limited edition of 99 specially designed and outfitted versions of BMW’s swoopy, four-door, 8-Series Gran Coupe sports sedan. This car was unveiled, virtually, on Wednesday in connection with the Frieze Los Angeles art fair, for which BMW is an official partner. In the United States, each example will cost $350,000. BMW has had success with similar limited editions, including an intended (pandemic-interrupted) run of 500 M2 sports coupes designed by the artist Lenny McGurr, who is known as Futura, and a series of 150 M4 Competition sports coupes created with Ronnie Fieg of the streetwear brand Kith. As one of the world’s best-known living artists, Mr. Koons lends cachet to the offering. “It’s good marketing for the company,” said Linda Yablonsky, an art critic and author of a coming biography of Mr. Koons. “But Jeff himself is really an evangelist for art. He wants to see art in everyone’s life. It doesn’t have to be his own, but he wants everybody to connect to art in some way because he believes it will do for them what it does for him — enhance their lives.” Evidence Discussions between BMW and Mr. Koons on production of a limited-edition vehicle for sale to the public date back more than a decade. But it was unclear what form this collaboration might take. Lead “I thought it was going to be one of these balloon dog-colored cars — bright yellow, bright red, bright blue,” said Thomas Girst, BMW’s head of cultural engagement, referring to the artist’s signature high-gloss sculptures, executed in gleaming polished stainless steel. Mr. Koons had a different idea in mind. “I started by working with kind of a rectangular design that became this kind of whoosh of air that I’ve incorporated, this emphasis of power. And I use other visual ways of communicating energy and velocity, and that excitement of movement,” he said. Evidence Yet the bold linear graphics, bright colors, and animated stars and explosions aren’t just superficial peacocking. “When I drive by and somebody says, ‘Hey, look at that,’ it’s not just about feathers being spread,” Mr. Koons said. “They see something that’s very visceral, and it’s visual.” Rebuttal The design conveys a sense of vibrant emotionality, a fascination rooted in delight and joy. This sensibility carries over into the interior, with its harlequin-like arrangement of contrasting colors and textures, all chosen by Mr. Koons. The finishes are labor intensive. The paint on each car requires an 11-step process, including hand-painting. According to BMW, it is the most complex paint job ever rendered on one of its series production road cars, taking 300 hours to execute for each vehicle. (During one of Mr. Koons’s supervisory visits to the factory, according to Mr. Girst, the paint shop workers asked him to sign their atomizer. “And he did,” Mr. Girst said.) Mr. Koons has experimented with similar concepts, on a very different vehicle. “It’s a bit like the paint job he gave the Guilty, a yacht he designed for the Greek collector Dakis Joannou,” Ms. Yablonsky said. “Jeff based it on World War I, razzle-dazzle ship camouflage and combined that with a kind of homage to Roy Lichtenstein, one of his artistic heroes,” she continued. “So the bright colors of this car, and the exploding, cartoonlike Pop graphics, are very much in keeping with his art,” she said. “And certainly, like Jeff himself, it’s very optimistic.” She added, “I’d be curious to see how it looks in motion.” Soon, Ms. Yablonsky, and other New Yorkers, will have this wish granted. In late March, Mr. Koons is scheduled to drive an 8 by Jeff Koons through Manhattan, dropping the car off at Rockefeller Center, where it will be on display from March 31 until April 4. At the end of the exhibition, this car will be auctioned off by Christie’s, with the proceeds donated to the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a charity Mr. Koons has frequently supported. As a means of introducing the car to collectors around the world, further premieres are planned this spring and summer (without Mr. Koons) in the United Arab Emirates, Switzerland, Belgium, China, France and England. Evidence “There’s already a lot of demand in the market, so we are confident of this car selling out, really quick,” Mr. Girst said. Claim Mr. Koons will also receive his own 8 by Jeff Koons. He said he looked forward to driving the car “in New York, and from New York to Pennsylvania,” where he maintains a weekend house — his grandfather’s farm. This will be a significant change from his usual ride. Because Mr. Koons has eight children, and often travels with them, their friends, his wife and a nanny, he typically drives a 13-passenger Mercedes van. “My kids say, ‘Dad, you should get yourself a sports car,’” he said. “But I like to be with my family. I have joy being with them.” As the 8-Series Gran Coupe has four seats, it will lend itself to such togetherness. “So I’ve ended up with the sports car that I can see myself driving,” he said. Evidence Does this vehicle rise to the level of art? “It’s a car envisioned by an artist,” Ms. Yablonsky said. “But it’s still a car. A functional object. Most art doesn’t function as anything but art.” Lead BMW and Mr. Koons remain open to future cooperation. “I think the story with Jeff is definitely an ongoing one,” Mr. Girst said. “The future is certainly electric, so why not, without making any promises, why not explore this further? There are certainly new challenges moving forward with design for electric cars, and new ways for artists to assist in tackling these challenges.” Concluding Statement

nytimes\jim-hagedorn-dead.txt

Using custom data configuration default-b7c090a5aa6903f6

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-b7c090a5aa6903f6\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-b7c090a5aa6903f6\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Representative Jim Hagedorn, a second-term Minnesota Republican who was a staunch ally of former President Donald J. Trump and who joined with other members of his party in seeking to overturn the election of Joseph R. Biden Jr., died on Thursday. He was 59.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8829991817474365}
His wife, Jennifer Carnahan Hagedorn, the former chair of the Minnesota Republican Party, announced the death on Facebook. She did not specify the cause or say where he died. He had long been public about his three-year struggle with cancer and announced in January that he had tested positive for Covid-19. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9482771158218384}
Mr. Hagedorn was diagnosed with stage IV kidney cancer in 2019, shortly after he was sworn in as a first-term member of the House of Representatives. He underwent immunotherapy treatment at the Mayo Clinic, and doctors removed the affected kidney in December 2020. He said at the time that 99 percent of the cancer was gone, but he announced in July that it had returned. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9265250563621521}
Mr. Hagedorn had run for a House seat three times without success, in 2010, 2014 and 2016, when he lost by a hair to the incumbent, the Democrat Tim Walz. In 2018, after Mr. Walz left to run successfully for governor, Mr. Hagedorn narrowly won his seat in a race against the Democrat Dan Feehan. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9686888456344604}
In a rematch against Mr. Feehan in 2020, Mr. Hagedorn won by a slightly larger margin, despite his health issues, and was raising money in anticipation of a re-election campaign in November. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7872128486633301}
“He’ll forever be known as a common sense conservative who championed fair tax policy, American energy independence, peace through strength foreign policy and southern Minnesota’s way of life and values,” his campaign said in a statement. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6149806976318359}
Throughout his short tenure in office, Republicans were in the minority in the House. All the while, Mr. Hagedorn remained a strong conservative, worked on behalf of small businesses and rural entrepreneurs, and stood as an ally of Mr. Trump, who won Mr. Hagedorn’s district in 2016 by 15 percentage points. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8898782134056091}
“I’ve said repeatedly since 2016 that of course I support Donald Trump,” Mr. Hagedorn told the Minnesota newspaper The Star Tribune in 2019, “because I felt like if he’d lost, we’d have lost the country.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5834971070289612}
In December 2020, Mr. Hagedorn was one of 126 Republican members of the House who filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to overturn the election of Mr. Biden as president, a brief based on spurious and disproved allegations of widespread voter fraud. The court rejected the suit, which had sought to throw out the election results in four battleground states. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9190037846565247}
Just hours after the deadly insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by a mob of Trump supporters, Mr. Hagedorn was among 147 Republicans who objected to certifying Mr. Biden’s election. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.761526882648468}
“There was no stronger conservative in our state than my husband,” his wife wrote in her statement, “and it showed in how he voted, led and fought for our country.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5949639678001404}
James Lee Hagedorn was born on Aug. 4, 1962, in Blue Earth, Minn., near the Iowa border. His father, Tom Hagedorn, was a U.S. House member and represented some of the same southern Minnesota territory as his son later did. His mother, Kathleen (Mittlestadt) Hagedorn, was a homemaker. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7370877861976624}
Jim was raised on the family farm near Truman, Minn., and in McLean, Va., while his father served in Congress, from 1975 to 1983. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7468370795249939}
He graduated from George Mason University in Virginia with a bachelor’s degree in government and political science in 1993. While a student, he worked as a legislative aide to Representative Arlan Stangeland, another Minnesota Republican. He later worked as a congressional liaison at the Treasury Department and as the congressional affairs officer for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing until 2009. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9726783037185669}
During the early 2000s, Mr. Hagedorn wrote a blog called “Mr. Conservative,” which has since been deleted. His posts took aim at Native Americans, gay people and women, among others. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4515986740589142}
In 2005, when President George W. Bush nominated a woman, the White House counsel Harriet Miers, to the Supreme Court (she ultimately withdrew her name), Mr. Hagedorn described her nomination as an effort “to fill the bra of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6612849831581116}
The blog posts resurfaced during Mr. Hagedorn’s unsuccessful run for the House in 2014; he told The Star Tribune that they were old and had been satirical in nature. They surfaced again in 2018, when he won the seat chiefly by proclaiming his loyalty to Mr. Trump. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9703332781791687}
Complete information on his survivors was not available. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8630465865135193}
The final piece of legislation that Mr. Hagedorn introduced, on Feb. 9, was a resolution to place a national debt clock in the House chamber. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6372500658035278}
“The American people deserve full transparency about this nation’s fiscal affairs,” he said, “and this resolution will be a strong reminder to lawmakers as they vote on proposals that could put our country further in debt.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5076674222946167}

Representative Jim Hagedorn, a second-term Minnesota Republican who was a staunch ally of former President Donald J. Trump and who joined with other members of his party in seeking to overturn the election of Joseph R. Biden Jr., died on Thursday. He was 59. His wife, Jennifer Carnahan Hagedorn, the former chair of the Minnesota Republican Party, announced the death on Facebook. She did not specify the cause or say where he died. He had long been public about his three-year struggle with cancer and announced in January that he had tested positive for Covid-19. Mr. Hagedorn was diagnosed with stage IV kidney cancer in 2019, shortly after he was sworn in as a first-term member of the House of Representatives. He underwent immunotherapy treatment at the Mayo Clinic, and doctors removed the affected kidney in December 2020. He said at the time that 99 percent of the cancer was gone, but he announced in July that it had returned. Mr. Hagedorn had run for a House seat three times without success, in 2010, 2014 and 2016, when he lost by a hair to the incumbent, the Democrat Tim Walz. In 2018, after Mr. Walz left to run successfully for governor, Mr. Hagedorn narrowly won his seat in a race against the Democrat Dan Feehan. In a rematch against Mr. Feehan in 2020, Mr. Hagedorn won by a slightly larger margin, despite his health issues, and was raising money in anticipation of a re-election campaign in November. “He’ll forever be known as a common sense conservative who championed fair tax policy, American energy independence, peace through strength foreign policy and southern Minnesota’s way of life and values,” his campaign said in a statement. Throughout his short tenure in office, Republicans were in the minority in the House. All the while, Mr. Hagedorn remained a strong conservative, worked on behalf of small businesses and rural entrepreneurs, and stood as an ally of Mr. Trump, who won Mr. Hagedorn’s district in 2016 by 15 percentage points. “I’ve said repeatedly since 2016 that of course I support Donald Trump,” Mr. Hagedorn told the Minnesota newspaper The Star Tribune in 2019, “because I felt like if he’d lost, we’d have lost the country.” In December 2020, Mr. Hagedorn was one of 126 Republican members of the House who filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to overturn the election of Mr. Biden as president, a brief based on spurious and disproved allegations of widespread voter fraud. The court rejected the suit, which had sought to throw out the election results in four battleground states. Just hours after the deadly insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by a mob of Trump supporters, Mr. Hagedorn was among 147 Republicans who objected to certifying Mr. Biden’s election. “There was no stronger conservative in our state than my husband,” his wife wrote in her statement, “and it showed in how he voted, led and fought for our country.” James Lee Hagedorn was born on Aug. 4, 1962, in Blue Earth, Minn., near the Iowa border. His father, Tom Hagedorn, was a U.S. House member and represented some of the same southern Minnesota territory as his son later did. His mother, Kathleen (Mittlestadt) Hagedorn, was a homemaker. Jim was raised on the family farm near Truman, Minn., and in McLean, Va., while his father served in Congress, from 1975 to 1983. He graduated from George Mason University in Virginia with a bachelor’s degree in government and political science in 1993. While a student, he worked as a legislative aide to Representative Arlan Stangeland, another Minnesota Republican. He later worked as a congressional liaison at the Treasury Department and as the congressional affairs officer for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing until 2009. During the early 2000s, Mr. Hagedorn wrote a blog called “Mr. Conservative,” which has since been deleted. His posts took aim at Native Americans, gay people and women, among others. In 2005, when President George W. Bush nominated a woman, the White House counsel Harriet Miers, to the Supreme Court (she ultimately withdrew her name), Mr. Hagedorn described her nomination as an effort “to fill the bra of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.” The blog posts resurfaced during Mr. Hagedorn’s unsuccessful run for the House in 2014; he told The Star Tribune that they were old and had been satirical in nature. They surfaced again in 2018, when he won the seat chiefly by proclaiming his loyalty to Mr. Trump. Evidence Complete information on his survivors was not available. The final piece of legislation that Mr. Hagedorn introduced, on Feb. 9, was a resolution to place a national debt clock in the House chamber. Claim “The American people deserve full transparency about this nation’s fiscal affairs,” he said, “and this resolution will be a strong reminder to lawmakers as they vote on proposals that could put our country further in debt.” Evidence

nytimes\jobs-hiring-fraud.txt

Using custom data configuration default-9e87bb1d878ff68a

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-9e87bb1d878ff68a\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-9e87bb1d878ff68a\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

It was as if a “Seinfeld” plot met John le Carré. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6412143111228943}
Kristin Zawatski, 44, who works in information technology, in a department of about 70 people, was helping to conduct a virtual job interview. She said she was impressed by the candidate’s sharp understanding of the technical skills required for the position. But about 15 minutes into the conversation, one of her colleagues muted the video call. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9510107636451721}
“The person answering the questions isn’t the person on camera,” he declared, according to her recollection, prompting an audible gasp from his teammates. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5357956886291504}
Ms. Zawatski’s colleague had recognized the voice coming from the screen and realized it was an acquaintance who was answering the technical questions while the job candidate moved his lips onscreen — something the candidate’s friend had just confessed to over text message. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8468825817108154}
“What did he think was going to happen when he moved across the country and realized he couldn’t do the job?” Ms. Zawatski later wondered aloud. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4771784245967865}
Job interviews have always demanded a pair of somewhat incongruous qualities: authenticity and polish. Interview guides urge candidates to put their best foot forward. Recruiters encourage people to be genuine, even have fun with the process. (“The surprising secret to interview success — be yourself,” goes the typical advice.) It can be a psychologically taxing combination of tips, compelling job seekers to wonder how they can simultaneously convey a real sense of their flawed, leave-dishes-in-the-sink personalities while also boasting of their abilities as a math whiz, polyglot, team leader, calendaring virtuoso or whatever. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9089824557304382}
“It’s very easy to present yourself as you would like to be, as opposed to the way you really are,” said Robert Feldman, a psychologist at University of Massachusetts Amherst and the author of “The Liar in Your Life.” People, he added, tend to learn from a young age the advantages conferred by fibbing. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8336706757545471}
Children are taught that when Grandma comes over with the gift of an impossibly ugly sweater, they should act as if they had gotten a PlayStation, Dr. Feldman said. As they get older, the stakes of lying are raised — most notably in a job interview, when there’s money on the table. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9620672464370728}
Remote hiring processes have given some job seekers the impression that they can get away with extreme forms of dishonesty. Virtual interviews leave open the possibility that candidates can ask a friend to feed them answers. Telephone calls can create a psychological distance between the interviewer and interviewee, Dr. Feldman noted, which may make it easier for people to justify presenting themselves in an inaccurate way. At the same time, people are doing far more interviews than before, with about one in five employees voluntarily switching jobs in 2020. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9868988990783691}
Still, recruiters know to expect some gloss in the hiring process. It’s even acknowledged in pop culture. “Fluent in Finnish?” Isla Fisher’s character is asked in “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” by a friend who is scanning her job qualifications. Ms. Fisher’s character responds: “Everyone has fudged their résumé a little.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4203502833843231}
Often, it’s as benign as someone forcing undue perkiness. Like Logan Levey, 32, now an office coordinator in San Francisco, who recalled how he had maintained a sunny expression while interviewing for hospitality roles. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9109904766082764}
“I always tried to keep the energy super high,” Mr. Levey said. “Even if I wasn’t feeling it that day.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5331149697303772}
Psychologists who study interviews note that a wide range of inauthentic behaviors can be in play. Most job seekers use what’s called “impression management” in the interview process, which means they’re thinking about how to present the best version of themselves, according to Joshua Bourdage, an organizational psychologist at the University of Calgary, and Nicolas Roulin, an organizational psychologist at Saint Mary’s University. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9249601364135742}
But there are honest, relatively honest and flat-out deceptive versions of that. Deceptive ingratiation can mean laughing at unfunny jokes, and honest ingratiation can be connecting with the interviewer over real shared interests, like hiking or watching the Knicks. Slight image creation means inflating your skills just a bit (maybe that camping trip becomes a passion for wilderness survival), while extensive image creation means making up stories of fake accomplishments (maybe that camping trip includes wrestling a bear). Some two-thirds of job applicants use deceptive ingratiation, and over half admit to slight image creation, according to research by Dr. Bourdage and Dr. Roulin. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.7570924162864685}
How likely people are to fall back on these practices depends on how much they want the job, as well as how easily they think they can get away with the ruse. Research has shown that Americans are more likely to consider using deceptive interview tactics than Western Europeans, and deception is more commonly considered in some parts of the Northeast and California than in other areas of the United States. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9390233159065247}
Whether employers pick up on fishy behaviors can depend on their level of desperation. Right now, with job openings high and unemployment low, many companies are scrambling to find talent. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6119760870933533}
“There’s a lot of demand out there for relatively few people,” said Ben Zhao, a computer science professor at the University of Chicago who studies online marketplaces, adding that the imbalance in the labor market might push companies toward risky hires. “That makes them more susceptible to misrepresentation or fraud.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9430748224258423}
Employers are also facing a moment in which collective angst is driving all kinds of unusual misbehavior. That’s something Tamara Sylvestre, 32, said she realized last year when she was working as a recruiter at a staffing firm based in Michigan and interviewed someone for an engineering position. She did an initial phone screening with the candidate, in which she noted that he had a high-pitched voice. When she conducted a follow-up technical interview by video, his voice seemed to have deepened. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.987840473651886}
Ms. Sylvestre later asked why his vocal pitch had changed, and he confessed that he had asked a friend to do the video interview for him. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4804278314113617}
“What were you going to do if you ended up getting the role?” Ms. Sylvestre recalled asking the candidate, bewildered. “He was like: ‘I was really nervous. I thought no one would notice.’ The role was 100 percent remote, so maybe he thought it wouldn’t make a difference.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8210043907165527}
Mark Bradbourne, 46, who works as an engineer in Ohio, recalled a trickster who got even further in the hiring process several years ago. Mr. Bradbourne asked a new employee during his first week to do a data visualization exercise identical to one he had completed in his technical interview. The new hire didn’t know how to proceed. When Mr. Bradbourne reminded the employee that he had done the same task in his hiring process, the man jumped up and ran out of the room, then immediately resigned. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9894354343414307}
Persuading a friend to pinch-hit during a technical screening is an extreme variety of interview fake-out. But organizational psychologists observe that interviewers tend to reward honesty. They recognize when people speak genuinely to the aspects of a company that resonate with their interests, Dr. Bourdage said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9606200456619263}
Interviewers are also getting savvier at detecting dishonesty. Meta, formerly Facebook, has in-house psychologists who devise probing questions that would be hard for interviewees to fake. Scott Gregory, chief executive of the personality testing company Hogan Assessment Systems, encourages employers to scrap classic interview questions — “What are your greatest strengths?” — in favor of situational and behavioral ones, in which candidates narrate experiences they’ve had or explore hypothetical scenarios. Meta’s head recruiter said the company expected candidates to turn on their camera for video interviews, though it can accommodate any circumstances that make it hard to do so. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.98575758934021}
Still, the subtler stresses of the interview process remain: In a corporate culture where a popular term of art is transparency, how much of your true personality can you reveal before you’re hired? Should you be yourself if yourself might not get you the job? {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.48347732424736023}
“It is a fine line between being unprofessional, too casual, too familiar, and being your authentic self,” said Miranda Kalinowski, Meta’s global head of recruiting. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.40104588866233826}
Kelsey Klausing, 32, a manager at Hogan, recalled years ago interviewing for a position that was slightly outside her realm of experience. Buckling under the pressure, Ms. Klausing found herself emphasizing skills that she had only really “dabbled in.” Weeks later, when she found out she was out of the running because the company had decided not to hire for the role, she felt a wave of relief. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9614795446395874}
“It probably wasn’t the best match for me anyway,” Ms. Klausing said. “Fake it till you make it can only last for so long.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5962694883346558}

It was as if a “Seinfeld” plot met John le Carré. Claim Kristin Zawatski, 44, who works in information technology, in a department of about 70 people, was helping to conduct a virtual job interview. She said she was impressed by the candidate’s sharp understanding of the technical skills required for the position. But about 15 minutes into the conversation, one of her colleagues muted the video call. Evidence “The person answering the questions isn’t the person on camera,” he declared, according to her recollection, prompting an audible gasp from his teammates. Claim Ms. Zawatski’s colleague had recognized the voice coming from the screen and realized it was an acquaintance who was answering the technical questions while the job candidate moved his lips onscreen — something the candidate’s friend had just confessed to over text message. “What did he think was going to happen when he moved across the country and realized he couldn’t do the job?” Ms. Zawatski later wondered aloud. Job interviews have always demanded a pair of somewhat incongruous qualities: authenticity and polish. Interview guides urge candidates to put their best foot forward. Recruiters encourage people to be genuine, even have fun with the process. (“The surprising secret to interview success — be yourself,” goes the typical advice.) It can be a psychologically taxing combination of tips, compelling job seekers to wonder how they can simultaneously convey a real sense of their flawed, leave-dishes-in-the-sink personalities while also boasting of their abilities as a math whiz, polyglot, team leader, calendaring virtuoso or whatever. “It’s very easy to present yourself as you would like to be, as opposed to the way you really are,” said Robert Feldman, a psychologist at University of Massachusetts Amherst and the author of “The Liar in Your Life.” People, he added, tend to learn from a young age the advantages conferred by fibbing. Children are taught that when Grandma comes over with the gift of an impossibly ugly sweater, they should act as if they had gotten a PlayStation, Dr. Feldman said. As they get older, the stakes of lying are raised — most notably in a job interview, when there’s money on the table. Remote hiring processes have given some job seekers the impression that they can get away with extreme forms of dishonesty. Virtual interviews leave open the possibility that candidates can ask a friend to feed them answers. Telephone calls can create a psychological distance between the interviewer and interviewee, Dr. Feldman noted, which may make it easier for people to justify presenting themselves in an inaccurate way. At the same time, people are doing far more interviews than before, with about one in five employees voluntarily switching jobs in 2020. Still, recruiters know to expect some gloss in the hiring process. It’s even acknowledged in pop culture. “Fluent in Finnish?” Isla Fisher’s character is asked in “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” by a friend who is scanning her job qualifications. Ms. Fisher’s character responds: “Everyone has fudged their résumé a little.” Often, it’s as benign as someone forcing undue perkiness. Like Logan Levey, 32, now an office coordinator in San Francisco, who recalled how he had maintained a sunny expression while interviewing for hospitality roles. “I always tried to keep the energy super high,” Mr. Levey said. “Even if I wasn’t feeling it that day.” Psychologists who study interviews note that a wide range of inauthentic behaviors can be in play. Most job seekers use what’s called “impression management” in the interview process, which means they’re thinking about how to present the best version of themselves, according to Joshua Bourdage, an organizational psychologist at the University of Calgary, and Nicolas Roulin, an organizational psychologist at Saint Mary’s University. Evidence But there are honest, relatively honest and flat-out deceptive versions of that. Deceptive ingratiation can mean laughing at unfunny jokes, and honest ingratiation can be connecting with the interviewer over real shared interests, like hiking or watching the Knicks. Slight image creation means inflating your skills just a bit (maybe that camping trip becomes a passion for wilderness survival), while extensive image creation means making up stories of fake accomplishments (maybe that camping trip includes wrestling a bear). Some two-thirds of job applicants use deceptive ingratiation, and over half admit to slight image creation, according to research by Dr. Bourdage and Dr. Roulin. Rebuttal How likely people are to fall back on these practices depends on how much they want the job, as well as how easily they think they can get away with the ruse. Research has shown that Americans are more likely to consider using deceptive interview tactics than Western Europeans, and deception is more commonly considered in some parts of the Northeast and California than in other areas of the United States. Whether employers pick up on fishy behaviors can depend on their level of desperation. Right now, with job openings high and unemployment low, many companies are scrambling to find talent. “There’s a lot of demand out there for relatively few people,” said Ben Zhao, a computer science professor at the University of Chicago who studies online marketplaces, adding that the imbalance in the labor market might push companies toward risky hires. “That makes them more susceptible to misrepresentation or fraud.” Employers are also facing a moment in which collective angst is driving all kinds of unusual misbehavior. That’s something Tamara Sylvestre, 32, said she realized last year when she was working as a recruiter at a staffing firm based in Michigan and interviewed someone for an engineering position. She did an initial phone screening with the candidate, in which she noted that he had a high-pitched voice. When she conducted a follow-up technical interview by video, his voice seemed to have deepened. Ms. Sylvestre later asked why his vocal pitch had changed, and he confessed that he had asked a friend to do the video interview for him. “What were you going to do if you ended up getting the role?” Ms. Sylvestre recalled asking the candidate, bewildered. “He was like: ‘I was really nervous. I thought no one would notice.’ The role was 100 percent remote, so maybe he thought it wouldn’t make a difference.” Mark Bradbourne, 46, who works as an engineer in Ohio, recalled a trickster who got even further in the hiring process several years ago. Mr. Bradbourne asked a new employee during his first week to do a data visualization exercise identical to one he had completed in his technical interview. The new hire didn’t know how to proceed. When Mr. Bradbourne reminded the employee that he had done the same task in his hiring process, the man jumped up and ran out of the room, then immediately resigned. Persuading a friend to pinch-hit during a technical screening is an extreme variety of interview fake-out. But organizational psychologists observe that interviewers tend to reward honesty. They recognize when people speak genuinely to the aspects of a company that resonate with their interests, Dr. Bourdage said. Interviewers are also getting savvier at detecting dishonesty. Meta, formerly Facebook, has in-house psychologists who devise probing questions that would be hard for interviewees to fake. Scott Gregory, chief executive of the personality testing company Hogan Assessment Systems, encourages employers to scrap classic interview questions — “What are your greatest strengths?” — in favor of situational and behavioral ones, in which candidates narrate experiences they’ve had or explore hypothetical scenarios. Meta’s head recruiter said the company expected candidates to turn on their camera for video interviews, though it can accommodate any circumstances that make it hard to do so. Evidence Still, the subtler stresses of the interview process remain: In a corporate culture where a popular term of art is transparency, how much of your true personality can you reveal before you’re hired? Should you be yourself if yourself might not get you the job? Counterclaim “It is a fine line between being unprofessional, too casual, too familiar, and being your authentic self,” said Miranda Kalinowski, Meta’s global head of recruiting. Kelsey Klausing, 32, a manager at Hogan, recalled years ago interviewing for a position that was slightly outside her realm of experience. Buckling under the pressure, Ms. Klausing found herself emphasizing skills that she had only really “dabbled in.” Weeks later, when she found out she was out of the running because the company had decided not to hire for the role, she felt a wave of relief. “It probably wasn’t the best match for me anyway,” Ms. Klausing said. “Fake it till you make it can only last for so long.” Evidence

nytimes\justice-department-cybersecurity.txt

Using custom data configuration default-a8e2e167413396e1

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-a8e2e167413396e1\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-a8e2e167413396e1\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

WASHINGTON — A top Justice Department official said on Thursday that the agency was bolstering its efforts to address cybercrime, as cryptocurrencies have increasingly become part of the global economy and cyberthreats become more and more common. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5878015756607056}
Lisa O. Monaco, the No. 2 official at the department, said in a virtual speech at the annual Munich cybersecurity conference that the agency had established a team at the F.B.I. dedicated to cryptocurrency; added a dozen federal prosecutors to a unit investigating and prosecuting criminal misuses of cryptocurrency; and tapped a director to lead it. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9669702649116516}
“We continue to confront cybercriminals who enjoy safe haven in authoritarian countries and who wreak havoc in both the digital and physical worlds,” Ms. Monaco said, adding that the changes were the result of a monthslong review scrutinizing a threat inextricably tied to hostile nations and criminal gangs. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8088975548744202}
The announcement by Ms. Monaco came a week after the Justice Department made its largest financial seizure ever, confiscating over $3.6 billion worth of Bitcoin stolen in a 2016 hacking. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6910645961761475}
The newly formed unit at the F.B.I., the Virtual Asset Exploitation Unit, is meant to provide expertise, equipment and training to help agents trace the flow of funds on the blockchain, the digital ledger that permanently stores records of cryptocurrency trades. It is expected to work closely with the prosecutors on the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, established in the fall. That team will be led by Eun Young Choi, a longtime computer crimes prosecutor. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9652983546257019}
The Justice Department also created an initiative meant to foster cooperation among international law enforcement groups as they investigate the use of virtual currencies in illegal activity and trace it as it changes hands. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7783861756324768}
Last year, the Justice Department disrupted REvil, a Russian ransomware group, and seized $6.1 million in cryptocurrency that had reportedly been paid as ransom. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5851067900657654}
Those seizures were possible because law enforcement has improved at identifying the people who are trading cryptocurrency on the blockchain, where users once enjoyed a far greater degree of anonymity. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.40299659967422485}
“Even in cyberspace, the Department of Justice is able to use a tried and true investigative technique, following the money,” Ms. Monaco said. “It’s what led us to Al Capone in the ’30s. It helped us destroy La Cosa Nostra in the ’60s. And it took down terrorist financing networks in the early 2000s. The currency might be virtual, but the message to companies is concrete.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9606267809867859}
Ms. Monaco said that there had been an “explosion” of cryptocurrency abuse and the use of ransomware, malicious code that prevents users from gaining access to their computers until they pay a ransom. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6742693781852722}
The F.B.I. is investigating more than 100 ransomware variants, and investigators are scrutinizing dozens of ransomware groups estimated to have demanded billions of dollars in payment. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5728431940078735}
As hackers became increasingly sophisticated at infiltrating and stealing information from corporate and government computers, they relied on cryptocurrencies to collect ransoms from users who were desperate to get their data back. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6301106810569763}
Last year, the Justice Department introduced the ransomware and digital extortion task force to develop ways to deter such breaches. For the first time, investigators used a traditional search warrant to execute code and erase digital back doors, and they worked with international partners to take down an enormous botnet network — moves that made hundreds of computers safe from hackers. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9725688695907593}

WASHINGTON — A top Justice Department official said on Thursday that the agency was bolstering its efforts to address cybercrime, as cryptocurrencies have increasingly become part of the global economy and cyberthreats become more and more common. Lisa O. Monaco, the No. 2 official at the department, said in a virtual speech at the annual Munich cybersecurity conference that the agency had established a team at the F.B.I. dedicated to cryptocurrency; added a dozen federal prosecutors to a unit investigating and prosecuting criminal misuses of cryptocurrency; and tapped a director to lead it. “We continue to confront cybercriminals who enjoy safe haven in authoritarian countries and who wreak havoc in both the digital and physical worlds,” Ms. Monaco said, adding that the changes were the result of a monthslong review scrutinizing a threat inextricably tied to hostile nations and criminal gangs. The announcement by Ms. Monaco came a week after the Justice Department made its largest financial seizure ever, confiscating over $3.6 billion worth of Bitcoin stolen in a 2016 hacking. The newly formed unit at the F.B.I., the Virtual Asset Exploitation Unit, is meant to provide expertise, equipment and training to help agents trace the flow of funds on the blockchain, the digital ledger that permanently stores records of cryptocurrency trades. It is expected to work closely with the prosecutors on the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, established in the fall. That team will be led by Eun Young Choi, a longtime computer crimes prosecutor. Evidence The Justice Department also created an initiative meant to foster cooperation among international law enforcement groups as they investigate the use of virtual currencies in illegal activity and trace it as it changes hands. Claim Last year, the Justice Department disrupted REvil, a Russian ransomware group, and seized $6.1 million in cryptocurrency that had reportedly been paid as ransom. Evidence Those seizures were possible because law enforcement has improved at identifying the people who are trading cryptocurrency on the blockchain, where users once enjoyed a far greater degree of anonymity. Rebuttal “Even in cyberspace, the Department of Justice is able to use a tried and true investigative technique, following the money,” Ms. Monaco said. “It’s what led us to Al Capone in the ’30s. It helped us destroy La Cosa Nostra in the ’60s. And it took down terrorist financing networks in the early 2000s. The currency might be virtual, but the message to companies is concrete.” Ms. Monaco said that there had been an “explosion” of cryptocurrency abuse and the use of ransomware, malicious code that prevents users from gaining access to their computers until they pay a ransom. The F.B.I. is investigating more than 100 ransomware variants, and investigators are scrutinizing dozens of ransomware groups estimated to have demanded billions of dollars in payment. Evidence As hackers became increasingly sophisticated at infiltrating and stealing information from corporate and government computers, they relied on cryptocurrencies to collect ransoms from users who were desperate to get their data back. Claim Last year, the Justice Department introduced the ransomware and digital extortion task force to develop ways to deter such breaches. For the first time, investigators used a traditional search warrant to execute code and erase digital back doors, and they worked with international partners to take down an enormous botnet network — moves that made hundreds of computers safe from hackers. Evidence

nytimes\kamila-valieva-falls-fourth-figure-skating.txt

Using custom data configuration default-c7847bbe19b0b184

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-c7847bbe19b0b184\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-c7847bbe19b0b184\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

BEIJING — Kamila Valieva, the Russian figure skating star at the center of a doping scandal, showed up at the Olympic rink on Thursday night facing a single, heavy expectation, especially heavy for a 15-year-old who has soared to the top of her sport in a quick four months, only to fall from it while the world was watching. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9181435108184814}
Her job was to win, for Russia. Continuing the country’s streak of two consecutive Olympic gold medals in the women’s event was at stake. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5706595778465271}
In a mostly black costume with flame-red gloves that glowed at the end of her long arms, she set out, determined, as Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero” began to play. But jump by jump, as her routine crumbled after uncharacteristic falls and stumbles, she knew a victory that everyone had once expected her to deliver was not to be. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.5151236057281494}
Instead of ending the night in first place to perhaps salvage an Olympics gone bad after she was found to have tested positive weeks ago for a banned heart medicine, she finished it by skating off the ice in tears. Her coach, Eteri Tutberidze, greeted her not with a hug, but with a stern look. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9362399578094482}
“Why did you let it go?” Tutberidze asked in Russian in a scene broadcast on live television. “Why did you stop fighting? Explain it to me, why? You let it go after that axel.” {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.6187151670455933}
Valieva did not reply. {'label': 'Position', 'score': 0.5971720218658447}
The Russians were expected to sweep the medals, with Valieva finishing first and living up to her reputation as one of the best skaters in history. But a Russian teammate, Anna Shcherbakova, won gold. Yet another Russian teenager, Alexandra Trusova, won the silver. Valieva, who just 11 days ago was deemed unbeatable because of her difficult jumps, textbook technique and prima ballerina’s artistry, was fourth. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9763660430908203}
Shcherbakova, the reigning world champion, won the gold with a smooth and poignant performance that included two quadruple jumps, scoring 255.95 points. Trusova won silver with 251.73 points. Kaori Sakamoto of Japan took the bronze with 233.13 points, saying she was both surprised and ecstatic about winning the medal. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9883372187614441}
Valieva finished with a score of 224.09 after winning the short program, which had given her the lead going into the decisive free skate. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4934118986129761}
An air of awkwardness loomed over the victory ceremony on Thursday night, as Shcherbakova, 17, sprung onto the top step of the podium to accept her stuffed mascot panda, a fuzzy reminder of her win until she receives her gold medal on Friday. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.7237176299095154}
“I was feeling a lot of pleasure because I happened to be in the right time and the right place and did the right things,” Shcherbakova said. But she quickly added, obliquely referring to Valieva’s situation, “On the other hand, I feel this emptiness inside.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6144357919692993}
Trusova, 17, was less thrilled about the finishing order. With five quadruple jumps, including three clean ones, she had climbed to second place after finishing fourth in the short program. She had been sure that her icy, rocker’s performance to the “Cruella” soundtrack was good enough to win. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9523706436157227}
After the results were finalized, cameras captured her weeping and screaming in anger, as she hesitated to return to the ice for the award ceremony. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6004713177680969}
“I hate it!” Trusova, who had been swept up in the week of controversy along with Valieva and her teammates, said while on camera near Valieva at the side of the rink. “I don’t want to do anything in figure skating ever in my life! Everyone has a gold medal, and I don’t!” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6416833400726318}
Later, she told reporters, with her eyes rimmed with red from crying, “I am not happy with the result. There is no happiness.” She said she had been alone at the Olympics and had cried because she missed her mother and her dogs. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.929201066493988}
With Valieva off the podium, the awards ceremony was held after all. If she had finished in the top three, Olympics officials had said that there would be no medals awarded until her doping case’s resolution, which could take months. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8464106917381287}
The awarding of medals for the team event remains on hold. Powered by Valieva’s remarkable performance that included the first quadruple jump by a woman in the Olympics, the Russian team won gold and the Americans and the Japanese wait for silver and bronze. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8028110265731812}
At the center of this chaos is Valieva’s positive test weeks before the Olympics for a banned drug called trimetazidine. The test was made public last week, and according to documents from an urgent hearing with arbitrators in Beijing, it was found that Valieva had two other drugs in her system. They were not banned substances, but antidoping officials say the combination of the three drugs seems to be used by athletes in an attempt to increase endurance. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9838293194770813}
Hours after the competition had ended on Thursday, the panel released a report that said the arbitrators chose to allow Valieva to continue at the Olympics because they felt a suspension would risk “irreparable harm” to her. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5351313948631287}
“None of this is the fault of the athlete, and it has put her in a remarkably difficult position where she faces a lifetime of work being taken from her within days of the biggest event of her short career,” the panel wrote in a 41-page judgment. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6333447694778442}
Valieva’s entourage, including her coaches and team officials, are under investigation by doping officials. That includes Tutberidze, who ended the day with another success for her program run out of a rink in Moscow. With Shcherbakova and Trusova finishing one-two, it is the second straight Olympics that Tutberidze’s skaters have won the gold and silver. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9850143790245056}
But in Beijing, Valieva was expected to be her star student, and the Games did start out that way. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8596808910369873}
In the team event, Valieva dazzled with her exquisite artistry and jumps so good that she could teach a master class in body positioning and speed. But on Thursday, when Russia expected her to win convincingly, Valieva, often so elegant, made mistakes. Again and again and again. Her cold determination melted into despair. The crowd gasped in unison. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9463321566581726}
Although Valieva landed her first jump, a quad salchow, she fell on two other jumps, looking disoriented as she struggled to right herself. In a perplexing performance that shocked even herself, she had errors on nearly every single jump, including her normally high-soaring quadruple jumps that she usually lands with barely a sound. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9543225765228271}
The audience felt so sorry for her that it started encouraging her with cheers. Her coaches, looking on from the side of the rink, did not join in. Tutberidze shook her head and, at one point, stared at the ceiling as her prodigy flailed on the ice. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9528887271881104}
After finishing their programs, Shcherbakova and Trusova both gave jubilant fist pumps. At the end of hers, Valieva slapped the air in frustration. For a prolonged moment, she skated around the ice with a look of disbelief as if trying to figure out what had just happened. She had come into the Olympics as the favorite to win — by far — and she had failed. Some fans began chanting, “Ka-mi-la!” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9217711687088013}
Once the final standings were decided, Shcherbakova celebrated in her sparkly burgundy dress and posed for photos with the Russian Olympic Committee flag behind her (Russia’s national flag and anthem are not allowed at the Games because of a sweeping doping scandal). {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8803149461746216}
Valieva was nowhere to be found. It has been a rough week and a half. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4617272913455963}
In an interview after being cleared to compete in the individual event, Valieva told Russia’s Channel One, the state-run TV station, that she had not slept at all on Sunday night after spending seven hours in a hearing with arbitrators who were considering her participation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6924571394920349}
“I’m happy but emotionally I’m tired, so this is tears of happiness, I think, mixed with a bit of sorrow,” she told Channel One. “But I’m surely happy to be at the Olympic Games and to try to represent our country, and I hope I will fully focus and demonstrate my results.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5172749757766724}
With her doping case looming, focusing had proved impossible. It took years for her to get to this point, on the cusp of her life’s goal. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5401129126548767}
Winning an Olympic gold medal had been her aim since she was just a young girl growing up in Kazan, a city about 450 miles east of Moscow. In those early years of skating, she rose quickly in the sport, pegged as a natural. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7815735936164856}
Years ago, a tiny Valieva dressed in a tiny white costume straight out of “Swan Lake” glided across the rink doing her tiny jumps and moving her body with a dancer’s soft arm positions and elastic legs. Even at that age, she moved so gracefully to the music that the notes seemed programmed into her DNA. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.5531785488128662}
But on Thursday, she was a different Kamila Valieva, one whose name will forever be synonymous with one of the biggest doping controversies in Olympic history — the exact opposite of a little girl’s dream. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8531531691551208}
Clutching her trusty worn stuffed toy rabbit in the area where skaters wait for their scores, the reality of her finish continued to sink in. She sat, and sat some more, frozen, as her coaches flanked her. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5559022426605225}
After several minutes, she rose and disappeared behind a curtain to an area beneath the stands, with one coach — not Tutberidze — draping an arm over her shoulder. With her head down, Valieva walked past reporters waiting to speak with her. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.6175929307937622}
Tutberidze’s other Olympians, like comets, have all faded away before a second Games, most gone after burning brightly, if fleetingly, in their success. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5092819929122925}
If history is a guide, other young skaters in the Russian sports machine are primed to take their place. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8155723810195923}
“Respected sports officials, you have destroyed the most talented figure skater in the world,” Andrei Zhurankov, a Russian commentator, said on television there. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6668742895126343}

BEIJING — Kamila Valieva, the Russian figure skating star at the center of a doping scandal, showed up at the Olympic rink on Thursday night facing a single, heavy expectation, especially heavy for a 15-year-old who has soared to the top of her sport in a quick four months, only to fall from it while the world was watching. Her job was to win, for Russia. Continuing the country’s streak of two consecutive Olympic gold medals in the women’s event was at stake. Evidence In a mostly black costume with flame-red gloves that glowed at the end of her long arms, she set out, determined, as Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero” began to play. But jump by jump, as her routine crumbled after uncharacteristic falls and stumbles, she knew a victory that everyone had once expected her to deliver was not to be. Lead Instead of ending the night in first place to perhaps salvage an Olympics gone bad after she was found to have tested positive weeks ago for a banned heart medicine, she finished it by skating off the ice in tears. Her coach, Eteri Tutberidze, greeted her not with a hug, but with a stern look. Evidence “Why did you let it go?” Tutberidze asked in Russian in a scene broadcast on live television. “Why did you stop fighting? Explain it to me, why? You let it go after that axel.” Lead Valieva did not reply. Position The Russians were expected to sweep the medals, with Valieva finishing first and living up to her reputation as one of the best skaters in history. But a Russian teammate, Anna Shcherbakova, won gold. Yet another Russian teenager, Alexandra Trusova, won the silver. Valieva, who just 11 days ago was deemed unbeatable because of her difficult jumps, textbook technique and prima ballerina’s artistry, was fourth. Shcherbakova, the reigning world champion, won the gold with a smooth and poignant performance that included two quadruple jumps, scoring 255.95 points. Trusova won silver with 251.73 points. Kaori Sakamoto of Japan took the bronze with 233.13 points, saying she was both surprised and ecstatic about winning the medal. Evidence Valieva finished with a score of 224.09 after winning the short program, which had given her the lead going into the decisive free skate. Claim An air of awkwardness loomed over the victory ceremony on Thursday night, as Shcherbakova, 17, sprung onto the top step of the podium to accept her stuffed mascot panda, a fuzzy reminder of her win until she receives her gold medal on Friday. Lead “I was feeling a lot of pleasure because I happened to be in the right time and the right place and did the right things,” Shcherbakova said. But she quickly added, obliquely referring to Valieva’s situation, “On the other hand, I feel this emptiness inside.” Trusova, 17, was less thrilled about the finishing order. With five quadruple jumps, including three clean ones, she had climbed to second place after finishing fourth in the short program. She had been sure that her icy, rocker’s performance to the “Cruella” soundtrack was good enough to win. Evidence After the results were finalized, cameras captured her weeping and screaming in anger, as she hesitated to return to the ice for the award ceremony. Claim “I hate it!” Trusova, who had been swept up in the week of controversy along with Valieva and her teammates, said while on camera near Valieva at the side of the rink. “I don’t want to do anything in figure skating ever in my life! Everyone has a gold medal, and I don’t!” Later, she told reporters, with her eyes rimmed with red from crying, “I am not happy with the result. There is no happiness.” She said she had been alone at the Olympics and had cried because she missed her mother and her dogs. With Valieva off the podium, the awards ceremony was held after all. If she had finished in the top three, Olympics officials had said that there would be no medals awarded until her doping case’s resolution, which could take months. The awarding of medals for the team event remains on hold. Powered by Valieva’s remarkable performance that included the first quadruple jump by a woman in the Olympics, the Russian team won gold and the Americans and the Japanese wait for silver and bronze. At the center of this chaos is Valieva’s positive test weeks before the Olympics for a banned drug called trimetazidine. The test was made public last week, and according to documents from an urgent hearing with arbitrators in Beijing, it was found that Valieva had two other drugs in her system. They were not banned substances, but antidoping officials say the combination of the three drugs seems to be used by athletes in an attempt to increase endurance. Hours after the competition had ended on Thursday, the panel released a report that said the arbitrators chose to allow Valieva to continue at the Olympics because they felt a suspension would risk “irreparable harm” to her. “None of this is the fault of the athlete, and it has put her in a remarkably difficult position where she faces a lifetime of work being taken from her within days of the biggest event of her short career,” the panel wrote in a 41-page judgment. Valieva’s entourage, including her coaches and team officials, are under investigation by doping officials. That includes Tutberidze, who ended the day with another success for her program run out of a rink in Moscow. With Shcherbakova and Trusova finishing one-two, it is the second straight Olympics that Tutberidze’s skaters have won the gold and silver. Evidence But in Beijing, Valieva was expected to be her star student, and the Games did start out that way. Rebuttal In the team event, Valieva dazzled with her exquisite artistry and jumps so good that she could teach a master class in body positioning and speed. But on Thursday, when Russia expected her to win convincingly, Valieva, often so elegant, made mistakes. Again and again and again. Her cold determination melted into despair. The crowd gasped in unison. Although Valieva landed her first jump, a quad salchow, she fell on two other jumps, looking disoriented as she struggled to right herself. In a perplexing performance that shocked even herself, she had errors on nearly every single jump, including her normally high-soaring quadruple jumps that she usually lands with barely a sound. The audience felt so sorry for her that it started encouraging her with cheers. Her coaches, looking on from the side of the rink, did not join in. Tutberidze shook her head and, at one point, stared at the ceiling as her prodigy flailed on the ice. After finishing their programs, Shcherbakova and Trusova both gave jubilant fist pumps. At the end of hers, Valieva slapped the air in frustration. For a prolonged moment, she skated around the ice with a look of disbelief as if trying to figure out what had just happened. She had come into the Olympics as the favorite to win — by far — and she had failed. Some fans began chanting, “Ka-mi-la!” Once the final standings were decided, Shcherbakova celebrated in her sparkly burgundy dress and posed for photos with the Russian Olympic Committee flag behind her (Russia’s national flag and anthem are not allowed at the Games because of a sweeping doping scandal). Evidence Valieva was nowhere to be found. It has been a rough week and a half. Claim In an interview after being cleared to compete in the individual event, Valieva told Russia’s Channel One, the state-run TV station, that she had not slept at all on Sunday night after spending seven hours in a hearing with arbitrators who were considering her participation. “I’m happy but emotionally I’m tired, so this is tears of happiness, I think, mixed with a bit of sorrow,” she told Channel One. “But I’m surely happy to be at the Olympic Games and to try to represent our country, and I hope I will fully focus and demonstrate my results.” Evidence With her doping case looming, focusing had proved impossible. It took years for her to get to this point, on the cusp of her life’s goal. Claim Winning an Olympic gold medal had been her aim since she was just a young girl growing up in Kazan, a city about 450 miles east of Moscow. In those early years of skating, she rose quickly in the sport, pegged as a natural. Evidence Years ago, a tiny Valieva dressed in a tiny white costume straight out of “Swan Lake” glided across the rink doing her tiny jumps and moving her body with a dancer’s soft arm positions and elastic legs. Even at that age, she moved so gracefully to the music that the notes seemed programmed into her DNA. Lead But on Thursday, she was a different Kamila Valieva, one whose name will forever be synonymous with one of the biggest doping controversies in Olympic history — the exact opposite of a little girl’s dream. Rebuttal Clutching her trusty worn stuffed toy rabbit in the area where skaters wait for their scores, the reality of her finish continued to sink in. She sat, and sat some more, frozen, as her coaches flanked her. Evidence After several minutes, she rose and disappeared behind a curtain to an area beneath the stands, with one coach — not Tutberidze — draping an arm over her shoulder. With her head down, Valieva walked past reporters waiting to speak with her. Lead Tutberidze’s other Olympians, like comets, have all faded away before a second Games, most gone after burning brightly, if fleetingly, in their success. Evidence If history is a guide, other young skaters in the Russian sports machine are primed to take their place. Claim “Respected sports officials, you have destroyed the most talented figure skater in the world,” Andrei Zhurankov, a Russian commentator, said on television there. Evidence

nytimes\kanye-west-jeen-yuhs-documentary.txt

Using custom data configuration default-8de04c90a164578c

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-8de04c90a164578c\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-8de04c90a164578c\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

No one could quite understand why the young producer was being followed by a cameraman. Almost everywhere Kanye West went beginning in the early 2000s — before “Through the Wire,” before “The College Dropout,” before anything, really — he was trailed by Clarence Simmons, known as Coodie, a comedian and public-access TV host from Chicago who had decided to document West’s attempts to become a successful musician. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.962213397026062}
In “Jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy,” the three-part Netflix documentary that draws heavily on that footage, the camera serves two functions: It captures West at a vulnerable moment in his nascent career, when the future was anything but guaranteed. And it is also a kind of marker of success on its own. The camera’s presence forces the people West encounters to treat him just a tad more seriously, or at least to wonder if they should. In almost every encounter captured, there is a slight hiccup at the beginning, in which the other person wonders, what exactly are we doing here? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9611839652061462}
West, one of the defining figures of the last 20 years, has been a consistent innovator in music and style. But he has also long had a preternatural grasp of the mechanisms of celebrity, how success is only truly impactful if it is imprinted onto others. West believed in himself, but wouldn’t stop until he’d convinced those around him, too. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.572838544845581}
“Jeen-yuhs” is something like the demo tape of that phenomenon. It is both fascinating and obvious, eerie in the way that it foretells who West eventually would become by showing who he always has been. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3896882236003876}
West, as we understand him now, is in early bloom during the first two of the docuseries’s three parts. Driving down lower Broadway in Manhattan, he tells a journalist sitting in the back seat how he feels when others tell him he’s thriving: “I might be living your American dream but I’m nowhere near where my dream is, dog. I got aspirations.” At one point, he says, “I’m trying to get to the point where I can drop the last name off my name.” (Indeed, he is now known solely as Ye.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9272456765174866}
Granting Simmons access was a combination of marketing savvy and also deep ego — “A little narcissistic or whatever,” West says. Nowadays, most pop superstars (and nowhere-near stars) are documented constantly for social media, but West understood the value of that labor early. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8521209955215454}
The result is a prehistory of one of the most transfixing and agonizing celebrities of the 21st century. The footage could explain to aliens what creativity on Earth looks like. We see West recovering from his 2002 car crash, going through several dental procedures, and then getting back to work and emerging with “Through the Wire,” his debut single, which would finally catapult him toward the stratosphere. The camera captures a vivid, undimmable mind at constant, stubborn work. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6815851926803589}
He asks to save the wires that held his jaw together, still bloody, for his mother, Donda. She appears throughout the film, often as a corrective force; even as West becomes more famous, he is never something other than his mother’s son. She doesn’t flinch from the lens, perhaps because the camera’s eye and that of a loving, knowing parent aren’t all that different. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9666191339492798}
West also encourages the new people he meets to live out their relationship to him on camera. When he plays Pharrell Williams “Through the Wire,” Williams becomes a willing actor, walking out of the room and down the hall, overcome with thrill. After a recording session with Jay-Z in which West talks his way onto a song, Simmons prompts Jay-Z for a quote, asking him to literalize his co-sign of West for the camera. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9873445630073547}
Not everyone plays along with West’s schemes. It’s odd to watch Scarface, one of rap music’s great philosophers, effectively pass on “Jesus Walks,” maybe the most meaningful and popular spiritual hip-hop song of all time. He also chides West for leaving his orthodontic retainers out on the countertop, a light spank from elder to child. (The retainers appear on several occasions, a symbolic embodiment of West’s still unformed persona.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9563948512077332}
There is, perhaps surprisingly, ample footage like this — this was an era in which West was almost always the less successful person in any interaction. Note the hangdog way in which he skulks out of the Roc-A-Fella Records office after going door to door and playing music for various executives, who seem to regard him as a lovable nuisance. Given how West moves through the world now, it’s disorienting to see him, time and again, as a supplicant. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9081891179084778}
This is footage that most hagiographers would omit, but Simmons and his directing partner Chike Ozah — professionally, they’re known as Coodie & Chike — understand their subject differently. Simmons was inspired, he says in the film, by the Chicago basketball documentary “Hoop Dreams,” a film that cuts its melancholy with bolts of hope. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9037010073661804}
And much about West in the early 2000s, before Roc-A-Fella Records relented and signed him as a recording artist (rather than just a producer), is lightly tragic. When West is at an industry event with far more famous people, in search of a little validation, Simmons films him from a distance, emphasizing his relative smallness. But even this footage doesn’t feel directed so much as captured, tiny moments that in the rear view appear huge. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9862492680549622}
Cameras are not neutral — they change their subject. But while everyone lies for the camera, some people live in the camera. Throughout the film, West often appears most mindful of how history might regard him, driven by a sense that in a room full of people, the most important connection he could make was with Simmons’s lens. (See the scene in which he and Mos Def rap “Two Words,” and West appears to be staring through the camera’s aperture somewhere into the future.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9797282814979553}
Simmons offers largely space-filling voice-over throughout the film, not an unreliable narrator so much as an uncertain one. There is either far too much or not nearly enough of him, more likely the former: The segments where he links West’s story to his own feel particularly ill-placed, a distraction that doesn’t offer context on the main subject. And some narrative choices are contrived: Too much time is given over to West’s desire to be featured in an MTV News segment spotlighting new artists. (It so happens that MTV was where Simmons and Ozah met.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9771197438240051}
The success that Simmons had hoped to capture ended up being his termination notice — once West’s career was finally operating under its own steam, he left Simmons (and his footage) behind. That alone would have made for a compelling film. But the third segment, which is far more scattershot, consists largely of scraps that Simmons accrues over the next couple of decades, an era in which West becomes something unfamiliar to him: a world-building superstar. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8837106227874756}
This episode is less narratively satisfying and coherent than the first two, but Simmons’s indiscriminate eye and his pre-existing comfort with West end up as assets. Where in the early 2000s, Simmons had an aspirant as his subject, now he has someone who exists between superhero and autocrat, a figure who isn’t performing simply for one camera but for a world of cameras and observers. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9117971062660217}
There is a grim scene in which West is speaking with potential real estate partners, a gaggle of older white men, and tells them, “I took bipolar medication last night to have a normal conversation and turn alien to English.” He likens his treatment by the public to being drawn and quartered. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8494912385940552}
Simmons lingers for a while — this is who his subject has become, and it is as important to see as any of the clips from when he was simply an up-and-comer. But real as it is, this isn’t the West that Simmons knows, or can stomach. There’s something itchy in the camerawork, and eventually Simmons does something that doesn’t seem to come naturally: He turns the camera off. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7732139825820923}

No one could quite understand why the young producer was being followed by a cameraman. Almost everywhere Kanye West went beginning in the early 2000s — before “Through the Wire,” before “The College Dropout,” before anything, really — he was trailed by Clarence Simmons, known as Coodie, a comedian and public-access TV host from Chicago who had decided to document West’s attempts to become a successful musician. In “Jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy,” the three-part Netflix documentary that draws heavily on that footage, the camera serves two functions: It captures West at a vulnerable moment in his nascent career, when the future was anything but guaranteed. And it is also a kind of marker of success on its own. The camera’s presence forces the people West encounters to treat him just a tad more seriously, or at least to wonder if they should. In almost every encounter captured, there is a slight hiccup at the beginning, in which the other person wonders, what exactly are we doing here? West, one of the defining figures of the last 20 years, has been a consistent innovator in music and style. But he has also long had a preternatural grasp of the mechanisms of celebrity, how success is only truly impactful if it is imprinted onto others. West believed in himself, but wouldn’t stop until he’d convinced those around him, too. “Jeen-yuhs” is something like the demo tape of that phenomenon. It is both fascinating and obvious, eerie in the way that it foretells who West eventually would become by showing who he always has been. West, as we understand him now, is in early bloom during the first two of the docuseries’s three parts. Driving down lower Broadway in Manhattan, he tells a journalist sitting in the back seat how he feels when others tell him he’s thriving: “I might be living your American dream but I’m nowhere near where my dream is, dog. I got aspirations.” At one point, he says, “I’m trying to get to the point where I can drop the last name off my name.” (Indeed, he is now known solely as Ye.) Granting Simmons access was a combination of marketing savvy and also deep ego — “A little narcissistic or whatever,” West says. Nowadays, most pop superstars (and nowhere-near stars) are documented constantly for social media, but West understood the value of that labor early. The result is a prehistory of one of the most transfixing and agonizing celebrities of the 21st century. The footage could explain to aliens what creativity on Earth looks like. We see West recovering from his 2002 car crash, going through several dental procedures, and then getting back to work and emerging with “Through the Wire,” his debut single, which would finally catapult him toward the stratosphere. The camera captures a vivid, undimmable mind at constant, stubborn work. He asks to save the wires that held his jaw together, still bloody, for his mother, Donda. She appears throughout the film, often as a corrective force; even as West becomes more famous, he is never something other than his mother’s son. She doesn’t flinch from the lens, perhaps because the camera’s eye and that of a loving, knowing parent aren’t all that different. West also encourages the new people he meets to live out their relationship to him on camera. When he plays Pharrell Williams “Through the Wire,” Williams becomes a willing actor, walking out of the room and down the hall, overcome with thrill. After a recording session with Jay-Z in which West talks his way onto a song, Simmons prompts Jay-Z for a quote, asking him to literalize his co-sign of West for the camera. Not everyone plays along with West’s schemes. It’s odd to watch Scarface, one of rap music’s great philosophers, effectively pass on “Jesus Walks,” maybe the most meaningful and popular spiritual hip-hop song of all time. He also chides West for leaving his orthodontic retainers out on the countertop, a light spank from elder to child. (The retainers appear on several occasions, a symbolic embodiment of West’s still unformed persona.) There is, perhaps surprisingly, ample footage like this — this was an era in which West was almost always the less successful person in any interaction. Note the hangdog way in which he skulks out of the Roc-A-Fella Records office after going door to door and playing music for various executives, who seem to regard him as a lovable nuisance. Given how West moves through the world now, it’s disorienting to see him, time and again, as a supplicant. This is footage that most hagiographers would omit, but Simmons and his directing partner Chike Ozah — professionally, they’re known as Coodie & Chike — understand their subject differently. Simmons was inspired, he says in the film, by the Chicago basketball documentary “Hoop Dreams,” a film that cuts its melancholy with bolts of hope. And much about West in the early 2000s, before Roc-A-Fella Records relented and signed him as a recording artist (rather than just a producer), is lightly tragic. When West is at an industry event with far more famous people, in search of a little validation, Simmons films him from a distance, emphasizing his relative smallness. But even this footage doesn’t feel directed so much as captured, tiny moments that in the rear view appear huge. Cameras are not neutral — they change their subject. But while everyone lies for the camera, some people live in the camera. Throughout the film, West often appears most mindful of how history might regard him, driven by a sense that in a room full of people, the most important connection he could make was with Simmons’s lens. (See the scene in which he and Mos Def rap “Two Words,” and West appears to be staring through the camera’s aperture somewhere into the future.) Simmons offers largely space-filling voice-over throughout the film, not an unreliable narrator so much as an uncertain one. There is either far too much or not nearly enough of him, more likely the former: The segments where he links West’s story to his own feel particularly ill-placed, a distraction that doesn’t offer context on the main subject. And some narrative choices are contrived: Too much time is given over to West’s desire to be featured in an MTV News segment spotlighting new artists. (It so happens that MTV was where Simmons and Ozah met.) The success that Simmons had hoped to capture ended up being his termination notice — once West’s career was finally operating under its own steam, he left Simmons (and his footage) behind. That alone would have made for a compelling film. But the third segment, which is far more scattershot, consists largely of scraps that Simmons accrues over the next couple of decades, an era in which West becomes something unfamiliar to him: a world-building superstar. This episode is less narratively satisfying and coherent than the first two, but Simmons’s indiscriminate eye and his pre-existing comfort with West end up as assets. Where in the early 2000s, Simmons had an aspirant as his subject, now he has someone who exists between superhero and autocrat, a figure who isn’t performing simply for one camera but for a world of cameras and observers. There is a grim scene in which West is speaking with potential real estate partners, a gaggle of older white men, and tells them, “I took bipolar medication last night to have a normal conversation and turn alien to English.” He likens his treatment by the public to being drawn and quartered. Simmons lingers for a while — this is who his subject has become, and it is as important to see as any of the clips from when he was simply an up-and-comer. But real as it is, this isn’t the West that Simmons knows, or can stomach. There’s something itchy in the camerawork, and eventually Simmons does something that doesn’t seem to come naturally: He turns the camera off. Evidence

nytimes\kevin-mccarthy-harriet-hageman-liz-cheney.txt

Using custom data configuration default-3dea1923c836dca9

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-3dea1923c836dca9\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-3dea1923c836dca9\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

WASHINGTON — Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, on Thursday endorsed Representative Liz Cheney’s G.O.P. rival for Wyoming’s sole congressional seat, taking the unusual step of intervening in a party primary to oust a onetime ally who has become the prime political target of former President Donald J. Trump. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9752094149589539}
Mr. McCarthy said he was backing Harriet Hageman, a pro-Trump candidate who has repeated the former president’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, in a race that has become a prominent test for the Republican Party. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8569081425666809}
“I look forward to welcoming Harriet to a Republican majority next Congress, where together, we will hold the Biden administration accountable and deliver much-needed solutions for the American people,” Mr. McCarthy said in a statement. “The most successful representatives in Congress focus on the needs of their constituents.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3590812385082245}
It was an extraordinary move for a leader who is aiming to become speaker of the House if his party wins control of Congress in November’s midterm congressional elections, and has worked to toe a fine line between his far right flank and more mainstream conservatives. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5758337378501892}
Congressional leaders rarely involve themselves in primary races against sitting members, but Mr. McCarthy’s move was the latest escalation of the Republican Party effort to exile Ms. Cheney for speaking out forcefully against Mr. Trump and participating in a House investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. After initially defending her, Mr. McCarthy last year led a push to strip Ms. Cheney of her No. 3 position in House Republican leadership. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9880494475364685}
In a statement, Jeremy Adler, a spokesman for Ms. Cheney, provided the verbal equivalent of an eyeroll, suggesting that Mr. McCarthy’s statement of support for Ms. Hageman was a reflection of her weakness. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7231631278991699}
“Wow, she must be really desperate,” Mr. Adler said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3403359651565552}
Mr. McCarthy’s endorsement came about two weeks after the Republican National Committee voted to censure Ms. Cheney and Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, for participating in the inquiry into the deadly riot at the Capitol. The resolution said the pair was involved in “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse,” the party’s clearest statement to date that it considered the riot and the efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election that fueled it defensible. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9811237454414368}
Mr. McCarthy last week defended the R.N.C., saying the committee had a right to pass its resolution. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3472670912742615}
In contrast, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, castigated the party for doing so, stating that “traditionally, the view of the national party committees is that we support all members of our party, regardless of their positions on some issues.” {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.7142294049263}
Local news outlets played down the significance that another national endorsement might have on the contours of the Wyoming House race. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6100667119026184}
Ms. Hageman has already been endorsed by Mr. Trump and Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky. But Ms. Cheney, who has represented her state since 2017, still vastly out-raised her challenger despite being all but exiled by her party. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9339402914047241}
Ms. Cheney brought in $2 million during the last quarter, entering 2022 with nearly $5 million in cash on hand. Ms. Hageman raised $443,000 last quarter and has about $380,000 cash on hand, despite the vocal backing of Mr. Trump and his family members. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9912795424461365}
But the endorsement said as much about Mr. McCarthy’s fear of alienating the former president — and the hard-right flank of his caucus — as it did about providing any meaningful boost to Ms. Hageman’s campaign. Ms. Cheney was the top House Republican who voted to impeach Mr. Trump last January, after the assault at the Capitol, and has become the leading voice of Republican opposition to his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.5841919183731079}
Mr. McCarthy, who maintains a cordial working relationship with the former president and has tried to help shape his endorsements of House candidates ahead of the midterm elections, cannot risk alienating him if he wants to maintain the support of his diverse caucus, where fealty to Mr. Trump is critical to many members. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6954901814460754}
Mr. Trump on Thursday endorsed an effort to change Wyoming’s election laws to forbid voters from changing their party affiliation to vote in primaries after the filing deadline. The proposal is an effort to block Democrats from switching parties to vote for Ms. Cheney in the primary. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9506338834762573}

WASHINGTON — Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, on Thursday endorsed Representative Liz Cheney’s G.O.P. rival for Wyoming’s sole congressional seat, taking the unusual step of intervening in a party primary to oust a onetime ally who has become the prime political target of former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. McCarthy said he was backing Harriet Hageman, a pro-Trump candidate who has repeated the former president’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, in a race that has become a prominent test for the Republican Party. “I look forward to welcoming Harriet to a Republican majority next Congress, where together, we will hold the Biden administration accountable and deliver much-needed solutions for the American people,” Mr. McCarthy said in a statement. “The most successful representatives in Congress focus on the needs of their constituents.” It was an extraordinary move for a leader who is aiming to become speaker of the House if his party wins control of Congress in November’s midterm congressional elections, and has worked to toe a fine line between his far right flank and more mainstream conservatives. Congressional leaders rarely involve themselves in primary races against sitting members, but Mr. McCarthy’s move was the latest escalation of the Republican Party effort to exile Ms. Cheney for speaking out forcefully against Mr. Trump and participating in a House investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. After initially defending her, Mr. McCarthy last year led a push to strip Ms. Cheney of her No. 3 position in House Republican leadership. In a statement, Jeremy Adler, a spokesman for Ms. Cheney, provided the verbal equivalent of an eyeroll, suggesting that Mr. McCarthy’s statement of support for Ms. Hageman was a reflection of her weakness. Evidence “Wow, she must be really desperate,” Mr. Adler said. Claim Mr. McCarthy’s endorsement came about two weeks after the Republican National Committee voted to censure Ms. Cheney and Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, for participating in the inquiry into the deadly riot at the Capitol. The resolution said the pair was involved in “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse,” the party’s clearest statement to date that it considered the riot and the efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election that fueled it defensible. Evidence Mr. McCarthy last week defended the R.N.C., saying the committee had a right to pass its resolution. Claim In contrast, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, castigated the party for doing so, stating that “traditionally, the view of the national party committees is that we support all members of our party, regardless of their positions on some issues.” Counterclaim Local news outlets played down the significance that another national endorsement might have on the contours of the Wyoming House race. Claim Ms. Hageman has already been endorsed by Mr. Trump and Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky. But Ms. Cheney, who has represented her state since 2017, still vastly out-raised her challenger despite being all but exiled by her party. Ms. Cheney brought in $2 million during the last quarter, entering 2022 with nearly $5 million in cash on hand. Ms. Hageman raised $443,000 last quarter and has about $380,000 cash on hand, despite the vocal backing of Mr. Trump and his family members. Evidence But the endorsement said as much about Mr. McCarthy’s fear of alienating the former president — and the hard-right flank of his caucus — as it did about providing any meaningful boost to Ms. Hageman’s campaign. Ms. Cheney was the top House Republican who voted to impeach Mr. Trump last January, after the assault at the Capitol, and has become the leading voice of Republican opposition to his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Rebuttal Mr. McCarthy, who maintains a cordial working relationship with the former president and has tried to help shape his endorsements of House candidates ahead of the midterm elections, cannot risk alienating him if he wants to maintain the support of his diverse caucus, where fealty to Mr. Trump is critical to many members. Mr. Trump on Thursday endorsed an effort to change Wyoming’s election laws to forbid voters from changing their party affiliation to vote in primaries after the filing deadline. The proposal is an effort to block Democrats from switching parties to vote for Ms. Cheney in the primary. Evidence

nytimes\kim-potter-sentence-manslaughter.txt

Using custom data configuration default-9d1540392c18cd40

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-9d1540392c18cd40\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-9d1540392c18cd40\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

The former police officer who fatally shot Daunte Wright during a traffic stop was sentenced to two years in prison on Friday, far less than the standard of about seven years for manslaughter, after a judge said leniency was warranted because the officer had meant to fire her Taser and not her gun. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9264496564865112}
Jurors convicted the former officer, Kimberly Potter, on two counts of manslaughter in December. They found that she had acted recklessly when she fired a bullet into Mr. Wright’s chest after warning that she was going to stun him and yelling: “Taser! Taser! Taser!” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.893659770488739}
Ms. Potter, a 49-year-old white woman who served on the police force in Brooklyn Center, Minn., resigned two days after the shooting in April, during a time of chaotic protests over the killing of Mr. Wright, a 20-year-old Black man. She has been imprisoned since the guilty verdict on Dec. 23. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9734880924224854}
Judge Regina M. Chu sentenced Ms. Potter on only the most serious count, first-degree manslaughter, in accordance with Minnesota law. The state’s sentencing guidelines list the felony count as having a presumptive punishment of a little more than seven years in prison, though the maximum penalty is 15 years. Judge Chu said the case was far different from most manslaughter cases, as well as from other high-profile police killings. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9893342852592468}
“This is not a cop found guilty of murder for using his knee to pin down a person for nine and a half minutes as he gasped for air,” the judge said, referring to Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis officer who was convicted of murdering George Floyd. She added: “This is a cop who made a tragic mistake. She drew her firearm, thinking it was a Taser, and ended up killing a young man.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9801692366600037}
Judge Chu handed down the sentence shortly after Ms. Potter sobbed while apologizing to Mr. Wright’s family in court on Friday. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5730432868003845}
“I am so sorry that I brought the death of your son,” Ms. Potter said. Speaking directly to Mr. Wright’s mother, she said: “Katie, I understand a mother’s love and I am sorry I broke your heart. My heart is broken for all of you.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5206088423728943}
Mr. Wright’s relatives said they were outraged by the leniency of the two-year sentence Ms. Potter received. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4154975116252899}
Daunte Wright’s father, Arbuey Wright, fought back tears as he described feeling cheated and hurt. He said the judge had seemed to care more about Ms. Potter than about Mr. Wright and his family. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9390292167663574}
“They were so tied up into her feelings and what’s going on with her that they forgot about my son being killed,” he said. “We actually thought we were going to get a little justice.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.843278169631958}
Ben Crump, a lawyer representing Mr. Wright’s family, said many people have been sentenced to longer terms in prison for selling marijuana. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6258019208908081}
One of Ms. Potter’s lawyers, Paul Engh, said he was grateful that Ms. Potter was “shown mercy.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.49277451634407043}
It is rare that police officers are convicted and sentenced to prison for killing people. And prosecutions are unusual in the few situations in which officers have claimed they thought they were firing their Tasers. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8692744374275208}
In 15 previous cases over the past two decades in which officers said they confused their weapons, three were convicted of a crime, including two officers who fired fatal shots. Johannes Mehserle, a transit officer who shot and killed Oscar Grant III at a train station in Oakland, Calif., in 2009, was sentenced to two years in prison. Robert Bates, a volunteer sheriff’s deputy in Tulsa, Okla., was sentenced to four years in prison after he shot and killed a man while meaning to fire his Taser. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9940425753593445}
Prosecutors in the office of Keith Ellison, the Minnesota attorney general, had suggested that they would ask Judge Chu to sentence Ms. Potter to a prison term beyond the standard sentencing range of 6.2 to 8.6 years, but in a new court filing this week they instead said that a sentence within that range would be appropriate. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9473947286605835}
Ms. Potter’s lawyers asked the judge to sentence Ms. Potter to probation, arguing that she would be a “walking target” in prison and that the prosecution’s sentencing request was “a political statement.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6718726754188538}
Mr. Engh said at the sentencing hearing on Friday that Ms. Potter had suffered a “decline in mental and physical health” in the nearly two months that she has been imprisoned in solitary confinement because of fears that she would be attacked. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7534555196762085}
Mr. Wright’s parents and siblings had asked Judge Chu to sentence Ms. Potter to the maximum possible prison term. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4889312982559204}
“Daunte meant the world to me,” Arbuey Wright said in court before the sentence. “He was handsome, he was my son, he was my prince. Daunte was my reason. He was my reason to do better.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7792288064956665}
Chyna Whitaker, the mother of Daunte Wright’s 2-year-old son, Daunte Jr., said she had become a single mother “not by choice, but by force,” and that Ms. Potter had taken Daunte Jr.’s “best friend away from him.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9277945756912231}
It is quite likely that Ms. Potter will be released from prison after about 14 months, in April 2023. Under Minnesota law, prisoners are generally freed on a supervised release term after they serve two-thirds of their sentence, and Ms. Potter will be credited for the 58 days she has spent in custody since she was convicted. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.978242814540863}
Prosecutors in Ms. Potter’s case conceded that the shooting on April 11 was a mistake, and in the moments after she fired, body camera videos showed her shouting that she had grabbed the wrong weapon and falling to the ground in tears. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.46608805656433105}
Mr. Wright had been driving with a friend to a carwash in a Minneapolis suburb when Officer Anthony Luckey, who was being trained by Ms. Potter, noticed that Mr. Wright had used the wrong turn signal. Officer Luckey followed Mr. Wright’s white Buick and noticed that the car had an air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror, which is against the law in many states, and that his license plate had an expired registration sticker. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9825820922851562}
Officers ran Mr. Wright’s name through a police database and determined that a judge had recently issued a warrant for his arrest because he had missed a court date on charges that he had illegally possessed a gun and had run away from police officers. He stepped out of the car at Officer Luckey’s request, but when the officer went to handcuff him, Mr. Wright twisted away from his grip and got back into the driver’s seat. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9880419969558716}
As Officer Luckey struggled with Mr. Wright, trying to keep him from driving away, Ms. Potter shouted “I’ll Tase you!” while drawing her department-issued Glock instead. Moments later, she fatally shot Mr. Wright, whose car traveled shortly down the street before crashing into an oncoming car. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8274470567703247}
Daunte Demetrius Wright had played basketball in high school and later worked at Taco Bell and a shoe store with his father. His mother testified at Ms. Potter’s trial that Mr. Wright had recently enrolled in a vocational school and was considering becoming a carpenter. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9206817746162415}

The former police officer who fatally shot Daunte Wright during a traffic stop was sentenced to two years in prison on Friday, far less than the standard of about seven years for manslaughter, after a judge said leniency was warranted because the officer had meant to fire her Taser and not her gun. Jurors convicted the former officer, Kimberly Potter, on two counts of manslaughter in December. They found that she had acted recklessly when she fired a bullet into Mr. Wright’s chest after warning that she was going to stun him and yelling: “Taser! Taser! Taser!” Ms. Potter, a 49-year-old white woman who served on the police force in Brooklyn Center, Minn., resigned two days after the shooting in April, during a time of chaotic protests over the killing of Mr. Wright, a 20-year-old Black man. She has been imprisoned since the guilty verdict on Dec. 23. Judge Regina M. Chu sentenced Ms. Potter on only the most serious count, first-degree manslaughter, in accordance with Minnesota law. The state’s sentencing guidelines list the felony count as having a presumptive punishment of a little more than seven years in prison, though the maximum penalty is 15 years. Judge Chu said the case was far different from most manslaughter cases, as well as from other high-profile police killings. “This is not a cop found guilty of murder for using his knee to pin down a person for nine and a half minutes as he gasped for air,” the judge said, referring to Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis officer who was convicted of murdering George Floyd. She added: “This is a cop who made a tragic mistake. She drew her firearm, thinking it was a Taser, and ended up killing a young man.” Judge Chu handed down the sentence shortly after Ms. Potter sobbed while apologizing to Mr. Wright’s family in court on Friday. “I am so sorry that I brought the death of your son,” Ms. Potter said. Speaking directly to Mr. Wright’s mother, she said: “Katie, I understand a mother’s love and I am sorry I broke your heart. My heart is broken for all of you.” Mr. Wright’s relatives said they were outraged by the leniency of the two-year sentence Ms. Potter received. Daunte Wright’s father, Arbuey Wright, fought back tears as he described feeling cheated and hurt. He said the judge had seemed to care more about Ms. Potter than about Mr. Wright and his family. “They were so tied up into her feelings and what’s going on with her that they forgot about my son being killed,” he said. “We actually thought we were going to get a little justice.” Ben Crump, a lawyer representing Mr. Wright’s family, said many people have been sentenced to longer terms in prison for selling marijuana. One of Ms. Potter’s lawyers, Paul Engh, said he was grateful that Ms. Potter was “shown mercy.” It is rare that police officers are convicted and sentenced to prison for killing people. And prosecutions are unusual in the few situations in which officers have claimed they thought they were firing their Tasers. In 15 previous cases over the past two decades in which officers said they confused their weapons, three were convicted of a crime, including two officers who fired fatal shots. Johannes Mehserle, a transit officer who shot and killed Oscar Grant III at a train station in Oakland, Calif., in 2009, was sentenced to two years in prison. Robert Bates, a volunteer sheriff’s deputy in Tulsa, Okla., was sentenced to four years in prison after he shot and killed a man while meaning to fire his Taser. Prosecutors in the office of Keith Ellison, the Minnesota attorney general, had suggested that they would ask Judge Chu to sentence Ms. Potter to a prison term beyond the standard sentencing range of 6.2 to 8.6 years, but in a new court filing this week they instead said that a sentence within that range would be appropriate. Ms. Potter’s lawyers asked the judge to sentence Ms. Potter to probation, arguing that she would be a “walking target” in prison and that the prosecution’s sentencing request was “a political statement.” Mr. Engh said at the sentencing hearing on Friday that Ms. Potter had suffered a “decline in mental and physical health” in the nearly two months that she has been imprisoned in solitary confinement because of fears that she would be attacked. Mr. Wright’s parents and siblings had asked Judge Chu to sentence Ms. Potter to the maximum possible prison term. “Daunte meant the world to me,” Arbuey Wright said in court before the sentence. “He was handsome, he was my son, he was my prince. Daunte was my reason. He was my reason to do better.” Chyna Whitaker, the mother of Daunte Wright’s 2-year-old son, Daunte Jr., said she had become a single mother “not by choice, but by force,” and that Ms. Potter had taken Daunte Jr.’s “best friend away from him.” It is quite likely that Ms. Potter will be released from prison after about 14 months, in April 2023. Under Minnesota law, prisoners are generally freed on a supervised release term after they serve two-thirds of their sentence, and Ms. Potter will be credited for the 58 days she has spent in custody since she was convicted. Prosecutors in Ms. Potter’s case conceded that the shooting on April 11 was a mistake, and in the moments after she fired, body camera videos showed her shouting that she had grabbed the wrong weapon and falling to the ground in tears. Mr. Wright had been driving with a friend to a carwash in a Minneapolis suburb when Officer Anthony Luckey, who was being trained by Ms. Potter, noticed that Mr. Wright had used the wrong turn signal. Officer Luckey followed Mr. Wright’s white Buick and noticed that the car had an air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror, which is against the law in many states, and that his license plate had an expired registration sticker. Officers ran Mr. Wright’s name through a police database and determined that a judge had recently issued a warrant for his arrest because he had missed a court date on charges that he had illegally possessed a gun and had run away from police officers. He stepped out of the car at Officer Luckey’s request, but when the officer went to handcuff him, Mr. Wright twisted away from his grip and got back into the driver’s seat. As Officer Luckey struggled with Mr. Wright, trying to keep him from driving away, Ms. Potter shouted “I’ll Tase you!” while drawing her department-issued Glock instead. Moments later, she fatally shot Mr. Wright, whose car traveled shortly down the street before crashing into an oncoming car. Daunte Demetrius Wright had played basketball in high school and later worked at Taco Bell and a shoe store with his father. His mother testified at Ms. Potter’s trial that Mr. Wright had recently enrolled in a vocational school and was considering becoming a carpenter. Evidence

nytimes\lab-grown-meat-sleep-airtags.txt

Using custom data configuration default-dd811714e3fb7e42

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-dd811714e3fb7e42\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-dd811714e3fb7e42\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

This weekend, listen to a collection of narrated articles from around The New York Times, read aloud by the reporters who wrote them. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6180790662765503}
Tissue engineers and scientists in several countries are trying to find a commercially viable way to transform animal stem cells into a marbled Wagyu steak, briny oysters or sushi-grade salmon. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.46828168630599976}
The global market for what is most commonly known as cell-based or cultivated meat could reach $25 billion by 2030, according to the consultants McKinsey & Company. That would be a tiny slice of the projected $1.4 trillion meat market, but one that food companies see as a key player in the fast-growing category called alternative meat. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9805665016174316}
Growing cells into meat remains the Wild West of food production. Although companies are racing to file for patents, and guard breakthroughs in cell technology like gold, almost a decade after the first cell-grown hamburger was introduced at a packed media event, the notion of buying an engineered steak at the grocery store remains an expensive theory. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9086937308311462}
The combination of next-day delivery, Ring surveillance footage and TikTok has put a spotlight on Amazon drivers. But it’s also created a new main character: the package itself. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6149671673774719}
Some Amazon customers, as Gita Jackson reported recently in Vice News, are now explicitly asking the company’s drivers to deliver a performance along with the package. They are posting signs to their front doors or tapping unusual delivery instructions into the Amazon app in the hopes of capturing a spectacle on their surveillance feeds. One TikTok user sets a driver’s obligatory shimmy to Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack”; another soundtracks it with “Teach Me How to Dougie.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9915549159049988}
“How did we get here?,” asks Amanda Hess. “It all feels like an inevitable outgrowth of Amazon’s ever-expanding product suite. Install its motion-activated Ring doorbell and your stoop becomes a stage; enroll in its Amazon Prime service, and you’ll summon an endless stream of players.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5481070280075073}
About a year into the pandemic, Marcela Rafea began waking up consistently at 3 a.m., her mind racing. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.501785159111023}
She would creep out of bed and tiptoe into the living room, where she would meditate, try a few yoga poses and open the window to hear the leaves rustle, the cars rush by and the dogs bark. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9510920643806458}
Then, at 6 a.m., she crawled back into bed and would sleep again until her youngest child woke her for the day at 7 a.m. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.798317551612854}
Unbeknown to Ms. Rafea, she had naturally reverted back to a sleep cycle that was believed to be standard in multiple cultures beginning in ancient civilization through the early 19th century. Now that many people are making their own schedules, working from home and focusing more on self-care, there has been a return for some to the idea of a segmented sleep cycle — voluntary and, given the stress levels of the last two years, not. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7720574736595154}
So are we simply reverting to our long forgotten, natural sleep cycle? And could this be the cure for those deemed middle-of-the-night insomniacs? {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4093080759048462}
Apple released chic, sleek AirTags early last year as a way to keep track of keys and purses. But every new convenience comes with a price: In recent months, people have freaked out after finding AirTags hidden in their bags and on their cars. A Sports Illustrated model, Brooks Nader, said she found one in her coat pocket after visiting a Manhattan bar. All these people received warnings on their iPhones, a feature Apple had built into the AirTag system to help prevent unwanted tracking. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9860806465148926}
When Kashmir Hill and Ryan Mac reported on this, experts were of two minds about Apple’s attempts to prevent nefarious use, with some saying the alerts were inadequate and others praising the company for unearthing a larger problem: widespread surreptitious tracking, usually done with devices that don’t notify a person of their presence. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8049984574317932}
Kashmir decided to examine both claims by planting three AirTags, three Tiles and a GPS tracker on her husband and his belongings to see how precisely they revealed his movements and which ones he discovered. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.41082775592803955}
Even in deep red East Texas, even on a Tuesday afternoon, even after a failed bid for the Senate followed by a failed bid for president, Beto O’Rourke still draws a crowd. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7183613181114197}
More than 100 supporters gathered last week in a park in the city of Tyler, southeast of Dallas in the Piney Woods region. Among the friendly crowd, however, there was concern and even skepticism as Mr. O’Rourke tries to become the first Democratic governor of Texas in nearly 30 years. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9384735822677612}
The Texas primary is fast approaching but his real challenge is the general election in November, when he is expected to face the Republican incumbent, Gov. Greg Abbott. Some of Mr. O’Rourke’s comments aimed at wooing national Democratic voters in the 2020 presidential primary — such as “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15” — may have already weakened if not doomed his chances in November. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8828023672103882}

This weekend, listen to a collection of narrated articles from around The New York Times, read aloud by the reporters who wrote them. Tissue engineers and scientists in several countries are trying to find a commercially viable way to transform animal stem cells into a marbled Wagyu steak, briny oysters or sushi-grade salmon. Claim The global market for what is most commonly known as cell-based or cultivated meat could reach $25 billion by 2030, according to the consultants McKinsey & Company. That would be a tiny slice of the projected $1.4 trillion meat market, but one that food companies see as a key player in the fast-growing category called alternative meat. Growing cells into meat remains the Wild West of food production. Although companies are racing to file for patents, and guard breakthroughs in cell technology like gold, almost a decade after the first cell-grown hamburger was introduced at a packed media event, the notion of buying an engineered steak at the grocery store remains an expensive theory. The combination of next-day delivery, Ring surveillance footage and TikTok has put a spotlight on Amazon drivers. But it’s also created a new main character: the package itself. Some Amazon customers, as Gita Jackson reported recently in Vice News, are now explicitly asking the company’s drivers to deliver a performance along with the package. They are posting signs to their front doors or tapping unusual delivery instructions into the Amazon app in the hopes of capturing a spectacle on their surveillance feeds. One TikTok user sets a driver’s obligatory shimmy to Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack”; another soundtracks it with “Teach Me How to Dougie.” “How did we get here?,” asks Amanda Hess. “It all feels like an inevitable outgrowth of Amazon’s ever-expanding product suite. Install its motion-activated Ring doorbell and your stoop becomes a stage; enroll in its Amazon Prime service, and you’ll summon an endless stream of players.” Evidence About a year into the pandemic, Marcela Rafea began waking up consistently at 3 a.m., her mind racing. Claim She would creep out of bed and tiptoe into the living room, where she would meditate, try a few yoga poses and open the window to hear the leaves rustle, the cars rush by and the dogs bark. Then, at 6 a.m., she crawled back into bed and would sleep again until her youngest child woke her for the day at 7 a.m. Unbeknown to Ms. Rafea, she had naturally reverted back to a sleep cycle that was believed to be standard in multiple cultures beginning in ancient civilization through the early 19th century. Now that many people are making their own schedules, working from home and focusing more on self-care, there has been a return for some to the idea of a segmented sleep cycle — voluntary and, given the stress levels of the last two years, not. Evidence So are we simply reverting to our long forgotten, natural sleep cycle? And could this be the cure for those deemed middle-of-the-night insomniacs? Claim Apple released chic, sleek AirTags early last year as a way to keep track of keys and purses. But every new convenience comes with a price: In recent months, people have freaked out after finding AirTags hidden in their bags and on their cars. A Sports Illustrated model, Brooks Nader, said she found one in her coat pocket after visiting a Manhattan bar. All these people received warnings on their iPhones, a feature Apple had built into the AirTag system to help prevent unwanted tracking. When Kashmir Hill and Ryan Mac reported on this, experts were of two minds about Apple’s attempts to prevent nefarious use, with some saying the alerts were inadequate and others praising the company for unearthing a larger problem: widespread surreptitious tracking, usually done with devices that don’t notify a person of their presence. Kashmir decided to examine both claims by planting three AirTags, three Tiles and a GPS tracker on her husband and his belongings to see how precisely they revealed his movements and which ones he discovered. Even in deep red East Texas, even on a Tuesday afternoon, even after a failed bid for the Senate followed by a failed bid for president, Beto O’Rourke still draws a crowd. More than 100 supporters gathered last week in a park in the city of Tyler, southeast of Dallas in the Piney Woods region. Among the friendly crowd, however, there was concern and even skepticism as Mr. O’Rourke tries to become the first Democratic governor of Texas in nearly 30 years. The Texas primary is fast approaching but his real challenge is the general election in November, when he is expected to face the Republican incumbent, Gov. Greg Abbott. Some of Mr. O’Rourke’s comments aimed at wooing national Democratic voters in the 2020 presidential primary — such as “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15” — may have already weakened if not doomed his chances in November. Evidence

nytimes\law-order-svu-organized-crime.txt

Using custom data configuration default-82da186f7e7f414d

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-82da186f7e7f414d\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-82da186f7e7f414d\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

If you were going to watch a police procedural — which, for the record, I don’t particularly recommend — you could do worse than NBC’s “Law & Order” franchise. Across 32 years and more than 1,200 episodes, the original series and its six American spinoffs have offered a gentle critique of law enforcement, presenting a parade of flawed individuals navigating a byzantine justice system. Detectives are stymied by bureaucrats and squabble with lunkhead patrol officers, who reliably contaminate crime scenes. Idealistic prosecutors grow disillusioned and leave for nonprofit work. And yet the franchise still hinges on a lesser-of-two-evils logic: The institutions may be imperfect, and the cops imperfect, but their vocation is, by definition, good. There are always more victims to avenge, and none better equipped to do it than the New York Police Department. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9667088985443115}
This cautiously optimistic view of policing was once embodied by Elliot Stabler, the detective played by Chris Meloni since the 1999 premiere of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” A hotheaded ex-Marine, Stabler initially clashed with authority and struggled to adapt to married life, receiving reprimands from his captain and consulting a shrink. But paired with his compassionate partner, Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), he proved an exemplary cop and father. He was dogged and intuitive, a man who gave more than he took, rough around the edges but heroic nonetheless. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9352284073829651}
And yet the franchise’s latest spinoff, “Law & Order: Organized Crime,” has done away with all that fortitude. In the pilot, Stabler’s wife is killed by a car bomb, leading him to contemplate violent retribution. He grows a goatee. He goes undercover. He has a rockin’ good time. In a scene from the second season, airing now, we find him training in a boxing gym, where he’s approached by a sultry mob wife — a suspect in a sex-trafficking sting — who presents him with a pair of carnation-pink panties and invites him to her home. Once there, Stabler spikes her drink with an incapacitating agent, and they kiss until she passes out. Stabler hustles into her bedroom and riffles for evidence, escaping through a back door when her husband arrives. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9778709411621094}
Never mind how implausible this sequence feels, especially given Stabler’s background as a sex-crimes detective. The tone is sleazy, owing more to 1980s action flicks than the trademark “Law & Order” grit. It’s a far cry from the franchise’s origins: middle-aged cops and attorneys plagued with lousy diets and troubled families, a dour but lively metropolis teeming with nosy neighbors and wisecracking witnesses. Instead, “Organized Crime” depicts a backlot version of New York, its desolate cityscapes almost devoid of pedestrians. Stabler’s task force targets deep-pocketed warlords and ethnic outfits, armed traffickers who hijack shipping containers and vaccine supplies. Officers meet informants on abandoned waterfronts, and everybody drives around in a giant black S.U.V. Cruising gang-controlled neighborhoods, Stabler is anxious, adrift and thirsty for vengeance. Whatever happened to America’s dad? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9681985974311829}
While Stabler busies himself with mobsters and madams, the long-running “Special Victims Unit,” whose fictional plots often riff on real-world headlines, has become a lugubrious public-service announcement on modern policing. Now a captain, Benson has been elevated to virtual sainthood, leading an understaffed unit and deflecting misogyny from her superiors. In the aftermath of George Floyd, even her pristine character is tested by institutional bias and dysfunction — and her commanding officer, a Harvard-educated Black man, is replaced by a chauvinistic white man prone to victim-blaming. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9064608216285706}
Benson’s relentless drive for justice remains. An arc in the 22nd season recalls the 2020 Central Park bird-watching incident, in which a white woman filed a false report against a Black man. (The charge against her was later dismissed.) The show’s stand-in for the bird-watcher is arrested; after he’s exonerated, Benson apologizes. “We both want the department to own up to their mistakes and to make changes moving forward,” she tells him. “We can get rid of the worst cops.” Her promise echoes Mayor Eric Adams’s campaign claim that he once worked to “reform the police” from the inside, and it’s a stretch even by “Law & Order” standards. The franchise once focused on good work done by flawed people, but now even “S.V.U.” takes a more evangelistic stance. Police departments may abuse their power, it concedes, but they are redeemed by the likes of Olivia Benson. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9883249998092651}
What’s jarring about the way “Organized Crime” and “S.V.U.” have diverged is how thoroughly both shows sacrifice realism to preserve optimistic attitudes toward policing. The original “Law & Order,” which aired from 1990 to 2010 (a revival begins this month), took pains to establish its characters as public servants, not superheroes. On the job, the detectives and attorneys wore drab, rumpled suits and worked desk phones from cramped offices. Off the job, they drank and avoided their families, because dealing with predators makes for a harrowing day. For some of them — Sam Waterston’s Jack McCoy, S.Epatha Merkerson’s Anita Van Buren — the lack of glamour suggested selflessness: Clearly they could’ve made more money elsewhere. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.927720844745636}
Judging by the show’s longevity, this vision was a palatable one, a big-tent philosophy that allowed the show to celebrate the justice system while acknowledging its failures. A tone of knowing cynicism lent the writing credibility; a wariness of machismo and bureaucracy gave it tension. It maintained a certitude that New Yorkers needed protection from their neighbors, and that those who provided it merited sympathy. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.892642617225647}
But in a time of skyrocketing funding and increased attention on police brutality, that big tent has collapsed. “Organized Crime” and “S.V.U.” face a new hurdle: They must demonstrate that cops are indeed the good guys. Both have cagily staked their territory. “S.V.U.” pays lip service to reform without seriously considering it; “Organized Crime” looks the other way entirely, supposing a wasteland of a city overrun by militant thugs. Stabler is an avenger, Benson a heart-of-gold administrator who could maybe be talked into some additional sensitivity training. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.7425554394721985}
It bears mention that another spinoff, “Law & Order: Hate Crimes,” was announced and then put on hold in 2019. Given the franchise’s expositional method and penchant for moral ambiguity, it’s unsettling to contemplate what that show might have looked like. In interviews, the franchise’s creator, Dick Wolf, has stressed that the shows maintain a nonpolitical lens on current events. But the incoherence of the new installments is a statement in itself. The shows could not ignore that millions of Americans were so shaken by police violence that they took to the streets in 2020. But it’s also true that some share of “Law & Order” fans must have thin-blue-line flags draped from their porches. Two roads diverged in a wood, and “Law & Order” pretends to take them both. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9867702722549438}

If you were going to watch a police procedural — which, for the record, I don’t particularly recommend — you could do worse than NBC’s “Law & Order” franchise. Across 32 years and more than 1,200 episodes, the original series and its six American spinoffs have offered a gentle critique of law enforcement, presenting a parade of flawed individuals navigating a byzantine justice system. Detectives are stymied by bureaucrats and squabble with lunkhead patrol officers, who reliably contaminate crime scenes. Idealistic prosecutors grow disillusioned and leave for nonprofit work. And yet the franchise still hinges on a lesser-of-two-evils logic: The institutions may be imperfect, and the cops imperfect, but their vocation is, by definition, good. There are always more victims to avenge, and none better equipped to do it than the New York Police Department. This cautiously optimistic view of policing was once embodied by Elliot Stabler, the detective played by Chris Meloni since the 1999 premiere of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” A hotheaded ex-Marine, Stabler initially clashed with authority and struggled to adapt to married life, receiving reprimands from his captain and consulting a shrink. But paired with his compassionate partner, Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), he proved an exemplary cop and father. He was dogged and intuitive, a man who gave more than he took, rough around the edges but heroic nonetheless. And yet the franchise’s latest spinoff, “Law & Order: Organized Crime,” has done away with all that fortitude. In the pilot, Stabler’s wife is killed by a car bomb, leading him to contemplate violent retribution. He grows a goatee. He goes undercover. He has a rockin’ good time. In a scene from the second season, airing now, we find him training in a boxing gym, where he’s approached by a sultry mob wife — a suspect in a sex-trafficking sting — who presents him with a pair of carnation-pink panties and invites him to her home. Once there, Stabler spikes her drink with an incapacitating agent, and they kiss until she passes out. Stabler hustles into her bedroom and riffles for evidence, escaping through a back door when her husband arrives. Never mind how implausible this sequence feels, especially given Stabler’s background as a sex-crimes detective. The tone is sleazy, owing more to 1980s action flicks than the trademark “Law & Order” grit. It’s a far cry from the franchise’s origins: middle-aged cops and attorneys plagued with lousy diets and troubled families, a dour but lively metropolis teeming with nosy neighbors and wisecracking witnesses. Instead, “Organized Crime” depicts a backlot version of New York, its desolate cityscapes almost devoid of pedestrians. Stabler’s task force targets deep-pocketed warlords and ethnic outfits, armed traffickers who hijack shipping containers and vaccine supplies. Officers meet informants on abandoned waterfronts, and everybody drives around in a giant black S.U.V. Cruising gang-controlled neighborhoods, Stabler is anxious, adrift and thirsty for vengeance. Whatever happened to America’s dad? While Stabler busies himself with mobsters and madams, the long-running “Special Victims Unit,” whose fictional plots often riff on real-world headlines, has become a lugubrious public-service announcement on modern policing. Now a captain, Benson has been elevated to virtual sainthood, leading an understaffed unit and deflecting misogyny from her superiors. In the aftermath of George Floyd, even her pristine character is tested by institutional bias and dysfunction — and her commanding officer, a Harvard-educated Black man, is replaced by a chauvinistic white man prone to victim-blaming. Benson’s relentless drive for justice remains. An arc in the 22nd season recalls the 2020 Central Park bird-watching incident, in which a white woman filed a false report against a Black man. (The charge against her was later dismissed.) The show’s stand-in for the bird-watcher is arrested; after he’s exonerated, Benson apologizes. “We both want the department to own up to their mistakes and to make changes moving forward,” she tells him. “We can get rid of the worst cops.” Her promise echoes Mayor Eric Adams’s campaign claim that he once worked to “reform the police” from the inside, and it’s a stretch even by “Law & Order” standards. The franchise once focused on good work done by flawed people, but now even “S.V.U.” takes a more evangelistic stance. Police departments may abuse their power, it concedes, but they are redeemed by the likes of Olivia Benson. What’s jarring about the way “Organized Crime” and “S.V.U.” have diverged is how thoroughly both shows sacrifice realism to preserve optimistic attitudes toward policing. The original “Law & Order,” which aired from 1990 to 2010 (a revival begins this month), took pains to establish its characters as public servants, not superheroes. On the job, the detectives and attorneys wore drab, rumpled suits and worked desk phones from cramped offices. Off the job, they drank and avoided their families, because dealing with predators makes for a harrowing day. For some of them — Sam Waterston’s Jack McCoy, S.Epatha Merkerson’s Anita Van Buren — the lack of glamour suggested selflessness: Clearly they could’ve made more money elsewhere. Evidence Judging by the show’s longevity, this vision was a palatable one, a big-tent philosophy that allowed the show to celebrate the justice system while acknowledging its failures. A tone of knowing cynicism lent the writing credibility; a wariness of machismo and bureaucracy gave it tension. It maintained a certitude that New Yorkers needed protection from their neighbors, and that those who provided it merited sympathy. Concluding Statement But in a time of skyrocketing funding and increased attention on police brutality, that big tent has collapsed. “Organized Crime” and “S.V.U.” face a new hurdle: They must demonstrate that cops are indeed the good guys. Both have cagily staked their territory. “S.V.U.” pays lip service to reform without seriously considering it; “Organized Crime” looks the other way entirely, supposing a wasteland of a city overrun by militant thugs. Stabler is an avenger, Benson a heart-of-gold administrator who could maybe be talked into some additional sensitivity training. Rebuttal It bears mention that another spinoff, “Law & Order: Hate Crimes,” was announced and then put on hold in 2019. Given the franchise’s expositional method and penchant for moral ambiguity, it’s unsettling to contemplate what that show might have looked like. In interviews, the franchise’s creator, Dick Wolf, has stressed that the shows maintain a nonpolitical lens on current events. But the incoherence of the new installments is a statement in itself. The shows could not ignore that millions of Americans were so shaken by police violence that they took to the streets in 2020. But it’s also true that some share of “Law & Order” fans must have thin-blue-line flags draped from their porches. Two roads diverged in a wood, and “Law & Order” pretends to take them both. Evidence

nytimes\letitia-james-ny-attorney-general.txt

Using custom data configuration default-18e35013b63a3487

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-18e35013b63a3487\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-18e35013b63a3487\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Letitia James took the convention stage just before lunch, hours before the Democratic State Convention’s main attractions were to appear, to accept a nomination for re-election as New York attorney general. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4484795928001404}
She delivered an impassioned speech on Thursday, focusing on her broad efforts to pursue justice on behalf of New Yorkers, especially in her investigations revolving around former President Donald J. Trump and former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7366084456443787}
She scarcely mentioned Mr. Trump or Mr. Cuomo by name. Nor did she discuss her brief, abandoned bid for governor, a decision that she said was based on her desire to continue her unfinished work as attorney general, which includes her office’s inquiry into Mr. Trump and his family. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9056617617607117}
The impact of that choice was hammered home just hours after Ms. James spoke on Thursday, as a judge ruled that her office would be allowed to interview Mr. Trump and two of his children in her civil investigation into the family’s business practices. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8804212808609009}
“When I was elected attorney general, I vowed to act without fear or favor to hold the powerful accountable, whether Republican or Democrat, in the public or private sector,” Ms. James said. “To be unbought, to be unbossed and unrelenting in the pursuit of justice and to stand up and speak up for the interests of everyday New Yorkers.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7792145013809204}
Ms. James, a Democrat from Brooklyn, jumped into the race for governor in late October following Mr. Cuomo’s resignation. She was initially seen as the most formidable challenger against Gov. Kathy Hochul, who had been unexpectedly elevated from lieutenant governor. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8378171324729919}
Ms. James’s campaign hoped to garner national support by highlighting the potential for her to make history as the first Black woman to become governor in the country. But she dropped out in December, crowded out from the race by Ms. Hochul, who consistently led in early public polls and amassed an overwhelming fund-raising edge. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8728168606758118}
Ms. James has not officially endorsed Ms. Hochul in the governor’s race, and mentioned her only in passing in her speech on Thursday. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.457095742225647}
Ms. Hochul, for her part, praised Ms. James as “a national leader in fighting for justice, in fighting against Donald Trump-ism every place it rears its ugly head.” She added, “She’s been out there for us and I’m so proud of her.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7906001806259155}
The race for attorney general was once expected to be a highly contested one, with as many as five candidates mounting campaigns after Ms. James announced her candidacy for governor. But they all dropped out in swift succession as soon as Ms. James abandoned that bid, clearing the field for her re-election. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7459672093391418}
Even with no major opponent, Ms. James gained a torrent of not-so-surprising endorsements over the past few weeks, from organized labor, from lawmakers on Long Island and from most of the state’s Democratic congressional delegation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5452340841293335}
At the same time, rumors began to swirl that Mr. Cuomo was entertaining thoughts of running for attorney general against Ms. James, who he has incessantly blamed for his downfall. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4483918845653534}
Ms. James’s office oversaw an investigation that found that a slew of sexual harassment allegations against Mr. Cuomo were credible; he has denied the accusations. Their feud briefly spilled over onto the convention floor on Thursday, with the crowd applauding after Ms. James offered a passionate defense of the investigation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9766378402709961}
“It has become clear the former governor will never accept any version of these events other than his own,” Ms. James said during an 18-minute speech in a Midtown Manhattan hotel. “And to achieve that he is now claiming the mantle of victim, disgracefully attacking anyone in his path, pushing others down in order to prop himself up, but I will not bow. I will not break.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9031320214271545}
She sought to directly link Mr. Cuomo to the former president, whom Ms. James has repeatedly challenged in court as attorney general: “I will not be bullied by him or Donald Trump.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6118931770324707}
Indeed, the convention was replete with reminders of the dramatic upheaval that the New York political landscape has undergone in less than a year. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.42486491799354553}
Ms. James accepted this year’s nomination in the same hotel ballroom in Manhattan where Mr. Cuomo celebrated his election victory in 2018. Mr. Cuomo was not invited to the convention on Thursday, and his spokesman recently denied that Mr. Cuomo was interested in running for attorney general. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9408658146858215}
The Cuomo-free convention made for a rare sight. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.837203323841095}
His father, former Gov. Mario Cuomo, who served three terms, dominated conventions in the 1980s and 1990s. Andrew Cuomo later cast a shadow over the 2002 convention, when he famously withdrew his candidacy for governor on the eve of the event, acknowledging he did not have a path to victory against the party’s favored pick, Carl McCall. In 2006, he won the party’s endorsement for attorney general as he mounted a political comeback before being elected governor in 2010. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9890313744544983}
Most of the party’s establishment, however, appears to have turned the page on Mr. Cuomo, who governed through ruthless tactics that left him with few, if any, political allies when he decided to resign or risk impeachment. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.31868693232536316}
“I haven’t heard anyone say his name and I think people are looking forward,” Pat Ryan, a Democrat and the executive of Ulster County, said shortly before Ms. James’s speech. “People don’t want us dwelling in the past.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6600605845451355}
Mr. Cuomo’s absence would have gone largely unacknowledged at the convention on Thursday had it not been for Ms. James’s speech, in which she also accused the Cuomo administration of lying to obfuscate the true extent of pandemic-related deaths in nursing homes. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6603977680206299}
Her comments appeared to be the culmination of pent-up resentment following weeks of escalating attacks from the Cuomo camp, which has repeatedly denounced the investigation — which he authorized — as unfair and politically motivated just as Mr. Cuomo weighs how to re-enter public life. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.49309828877449036}
Indeed, after Ms. James’s speech, Richard Azzopardi, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, released a statement that accused her of being “a serial liar who continues to dodge answering a single substantive question about her sham report.” Mr. Cuomo’s lawyer said last week that he intended to file a professional misconduct complaint against Ms. James. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8332779407501221}
On Thursday, Ms. James described herself as “the people’s lawyer,” thanking the delegates “for giving me the opportunity to carry your flag and to be your candidate to continue this work.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7072229385375977}

Letitia James took the convention stage just before lunch, hours before the Democratic State Convention’s main attractions were to appear, to accept a nomination for re-election as New York attorney general. She delivered an impassioned speech on Thursday, focusing on her broad efforts to pursue justice on behalf of New Yorkers, especially in her investigations revolving around former President Donald J. Trump and former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. She scarcely mentioned Mr. Trump or Mr. Cuomo by name. Nor did she discuss her brief, abandoned bid for governor, a decision that she said was based on her desire to continue her unfinished work as attorney general, which includes her office’s inquiry into Mr. Trump and his family. The impact of that choice was hammered home just hours after Ms. James spoke on Thursday, as a judge ruled that her office would be allowed to interview Mr. Trump and two of his children in her civil investigation into the family’s business practices. “When I was elected attorney general, I vowed to act without fear or favor to hold the powerful accountable, whether Republican or Democrat, in the public or private sector,” Ms. James said. “To be unbought, to be unbossed and unrelenting in the pursuit of justice and to stand up and speak up for the interests of everyday New Yorkers.” Ms. James, a Democrat from Brooklyn, jumped into the race for governor in late October following Mr. Cuomo’s resignation. She was initially seen as the most formidable challenger against Gov. Kathy Hochul, who had been unexpectedly elevated from lieutenant governor. Ms. James’s campaign hoped to garner national support by highlighting the potential for her to make history as the first Black woman to become governor in the country. But she dropped out in December, crowded out from the race by Ms. Hochul, who consistently led in early public polls and amassed an overwhelming fund-raising edge. Ms. James has not officially endorsed Ms. Hochul in the governor’s race, and mentioned her only in passing in her speech on Thursday. Ms. Hochul, for her part, praised Ms. James as “a national leader in fighting for justice, in fighting against Donald Trump-ism every place it rears its ugly head.” She added, “She’s been out there for us and I’m so proud of her.” The race for attorney general was once expected to be a highly contested one, with as many as five candidates mounting campaigns after Ms. James announced her candidacy for governor. But they all dropped out in swift succession as soon as Ms. James abandoned that bid, clearing the field for her re-election. Even with no major opponent, Ms. James gained a torrent of not-so-surprising endorsements over the past few weeks, from organized labor, from lawmakers on Long Island and from most of the state’s Democratic congressional delegation. Evidence At the same time, rumors began to swirl that Mr. Cuomo was entertaining thoughts of running for attorney general against Ms. James, who he has incessantly blamed for his downfall. Claim Ms. James’s office oversaw an investigation that found that a slew of sexual harassment allegations against Mr. Cuomo were credible; he has denied the accusations. Their feud briefly spilled over onto the convention floor on Thursday, with the crowd applauding after Ms. James offered a passionate defense of the investigation. “It has become clear the former governor will never accept any version of these events other than his own,” Ms. James said during an 18-minute speech in a Midtown Manhattan hotel. “And to achieve that he is now claiming the mantle of victim, disgracefully attacking anyone in his path, pushing others down in order to prop himself up, but I will not bow. I will not break.” She sought to directly link Mr. Cuomo to the former president, whom Ms. James has repeatedly challenged in court as attorney general: “I will not be bullied by him or Donald Trump.” Evidence Indeed, the convention was replete with reminders of the dramatic upheaval that the New York political landscape has undergone in less than a year. Rebuttal Ms. James accepted this year’s nomination in the same hotel ballroom in Manhattan where Mr. Cuomo celebrated his election victory in 2018. Mr. Cuomo was not invited to the convention on Thursday, and his spokesman recently denied that Mr. Cuomo was interested in running for attorney general. Evidence The Cuomo-free convention made for a rare sight. Claim His father, former Gov. Mario Cuomo, who served three terms, dominated conventions in the 1980s and 1990s. Andrew Cuomo later cast a shadow over the 2002 convention, when he famously withdrew his candidacy for governor on the eve of the event, acknowledging he did not have a path to victory against the party’s favored pick, Carl McCall. In 2006, he won the party’s endorsement for attorney general as he mounted a political comeback before being elected governor in 2010. Evidence Most of the party’s establishment, however, appears to have turned the page on Mr. Cuomo, who governed through ruthless tactics that left him with few, if any, political allies when he decided to resign or risk impeachment. Claim “I haven’t heard anyone say his name and I think people are looking forward,” Pat Ryan, a Democrat and the executive of Ulster County, said shortly before Ms. James’s speech. “People don’t want us dwelling in the past.” Mr. Cuomo’s absence would have gone largely unacknowledged at the convention on Thursday had it not been for Ms. James’s speech, in which she also accused the Cuomo administration of lying to obfuscate the true extent of pandemic-related deaths in nursing homes. Her comments appeared to be the culmination of pent-up resentment following weeks of escalating attacks from the Cuomo camp, which has repeatedly denounced the investigation — which he authorized — as unfair and politically motivated just as Mr. Cuomo weighs how to re-enter public life. Indeed, after Ms. James’s speech, Richard Azzopardi, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, released a statement that accused her of being “a serial liar who continues to dodge answering a single substantive question about her sham report.” Mr. Cuomo’s lawyer said last week that he intended to file a professional misconduct complaint against Ms. James. On Thursday, Ms. James described herself as “the people’s lawyer,” thanking the delegates “for giving me the opportunity to carry your flag and to be your candidate to continue this work.” Evidence

nytimes\liberalism-democracy-russia-ukraine.txt

Using custom data configuration default-bc9291a808ec2565

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-bc9291a808ec2565\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-bc9291a808ec2565\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

In the early 1990s I was a roving correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, based in Europe. Some years it felt as if all I did was cover good news: the end of the Soviet Union, Ukrainians voting for independence, German reunification, the spread of democracy across Eastern Europe, Mandela coming out of prison and the end of apartheid, the Oslo peace process that seemed to bring stability to the Middle East. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9253960847854614}
I obsess about those years now. I obsess about them because the good times did not last. History is reverting toward barbarism. We have an authoritarian strongman in Russia threatening to invade his neighbor, an increasingly authoritarian China waging genocide on its people and threatening Taiwan, cyberattacks undermining the world order, democracy in retreat worldwide, thuggish populists across the West undermining nations from within. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.793045699596405}
What the hell happened? Why were the hopes of the 1990s not realized? What is the key factor that has made the 21st century so dark, regressive and dangerous? {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3686830997467041}
The normal thing to say is that the liberal world order is in crisis. But just saying that doesn’t explain why. Why are people rejecting liberalism? What weakness in liberalism are its enemies exploiting? What is at the root of this dark century? Let me offer one explanation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7668637037277222}
Liberalism is a way of life built on respect for the dignity of each individual. A liberal order, John Stuart Mill suggested, is one in which people are free to conduct “experiments in living” so you wind up with “a large variety in types of character.” There’s no one best way to live, so liberals celebrate freedom, personal growth and diversity. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5902455449104309}
Many of America’s founders were fervent believers in liberal democracy — up to a point. They had a profound respect for individual virtue, but also individual frailty. Samuel Adams said, “Ambitions and lust for power … are predominant passions in the breasts of most men.” Patrick Henry admitted to feelings of dread when he contemplated the “depravity of human nature.” One delegate to the constitutional convention said that the people “lack information and are constantly liable to be misled.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9676584601402283}
Our founders were aware that majorities are easily led by ambitious demagogues. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8500736951828003}
So our founders built a system that respected popular opinion and majority rule while trying to build guardrails to check popular passion and prejudice. The crimes of the constitutional order are by now well known. It acquiesced to the existence of slavery and prolonged that institution for nearly another century. Early democratic systems enfranchised only a small share of adult Americans. But the genius of the Constitution was in its attempt to move toward democracy while trying to prevent undue concentrations of power. The founders divided power among the branches. They built in a whole series of republican checks, so that demagogues and populist crazes would not sweep over the land. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9068036079406738}
“They designed a constitution for fallen people,” the historian Robert Tracy McKenzie writes in his book “We the Fallen People.” “Its genius lay in how it held in tension two seemingly incompatible beliefs: first, that the majority must generally prevail; and second, that the majority is predisposed to seek personal advantage above the common good.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8788387179374695}
While the Constitution guarded against abuses of power, the founders recognized that a much more important set of civic practices would mold people to be capable of being self-governing citizens: Churches were meant to teach virtue; leaders were to receive classical education, so they might understand human virtue and vice and the fragility of democracy; everyday citizens were to lead their lives as yeoman farmers so they might learn to live simply and work hard; civic associations and local government were to instill the habits of public service; patriotic rituals were observed to instill shared love of country; newspapers and magazines were there (more in theory than in fact) to create a well-informed citizenry; etiquette rules and democratic manners were adopted to encourage social equality and mutual respect. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9130095839500427}
Think of it like farming. Planting the seeds is like establishing a democracy. But for democracy to function you have to till and fertilize the soil, erect fences, pull up weeds, prune the early growth. The founders knew that democracy is not natural. It takes a lot of cultivation to make democracy work. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9396858811378479}
American foreign policy had a second founding after World War II. For much of our history Americans were content to prosper behind the safety of the oceans. But after having been dragged into two world wars, a generation of Americans realized the old attitude wasn’t working any more and America, following the leadership of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, would have to help build a liberal world order if it was to remain secure. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.49219080805778503}
The postwar generation was a bit like the founding generation. Its leaders — from Truman to George F. Kennan to Reinhold Niebuhr — championed democracy, but they had no illusions about the depravity of human beings. They’d read their history and understood that stretching back thousands of years, war, authoritarianism, exploitation, great powers crushing little ones — these were just the natural state of human societies. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.685010552406311}
If America was to be secure, Americans would have to plant the seeds of democracy, but also do all the work of cultivation so those seeds could flourish. Americans oversaw the creation of peaceful democracies from the ruins of military dictatorships in Germany and Japan. They funded the Marshall Plan. They helped build multinational institutions like NATO, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund. American military might stood ready to push back against the wolves who threatened the world order — sometimes effectively, as in Europe, but oftentimes, as in Vietnam and Iraq, recklessly and self-destructively. America championed democracy and human rights, at least when the Communists were violating them (not so much when our dictator allies across, say, Latin America were). {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9710975885391235}
Just as America’s founders understood that democracy is not natural, the postwar generation understood that peace is not natural — it has to be tended and cultivated from the frailties of human passion and greed. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5711334943771362}
Over the past few generations that hopeful but sober view of human nature has faded. What’s been called the Culture of Narcissism took hold, with the view that human beings should be unshackled from restraint. You can trust yourself to be unselfish! Democracy and world peace were taken for granted. As Robert Kagan put it in his book “The Jungle Grows Back”: “We have lived so long inside the bubble of the liberal order that we can imagine no other kind of world. We think it is natural and normal, even inevitable.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3938602805137634}
If people are naturally good, we no longer have to do the hard agricultural work of cultivating virtuous citizens or fighting against human frailty. The Western advisers I covered in Russia in the early 1990s thought a lot about privatization and market reforms and very little about how to prevent greedy monsters from stealing the whole country. They had a naïve view of human nature. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9586477875709534}
Even in America, over the past decades, the institutions that earlier generations thought were essential to molding a democratic citizenry have withered or malfunctioned. Many churches and media outlets have gone partisan. Civics education has receded. Neighborhood organizations have shrunk. Patriotic rituals are out of fashion. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8778680562973022}
What happens when you don’t tend the seedbeds of democracy? Chaos? War? No, you return to normal. The 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th centuries were normal. Big countries like China, Russia and Turkey are ruled by fierce leaders with massive power. That’s normal. Small aristocracies in many nations hog gigantic shares of their nations’ wealth. That’s normal. Many people come to despise cultural outsiders, like immigrants. Normal. Global affairs resembles the law of the jungle, with big countries threatening small ones. This is the way it’s been for most of human history. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9364643692970276}
In normal times, people crave order and leaders like Vladimir Putin arise to give it to them. Putin and Xi Jinping have arisen to be the 21st century’s paradigmatic men. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6978890299797058}
Putin has established political order in Russia by reviving the Russian strong state tradition and by concentrating power in the hands of one man. He has established economic order through a grand bargain with oligarch-led firms, with him as the ultimate C.E.O. As Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy write in their book, “Mr. Putin,” corruption is the glue that holds the system together. Everybody’s wealth is deliberately tainted, so Putin has the power to accuse anyone of corruption and remove anyone at any time. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.963930606842041}
He offers cultural order. He embraces the Russian Orthodox Church and rails against the postmodern godlessness of the West. He scorns homosexuality and transgenderism. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7959276437759399}
Putin has redefined global conservatism and made himself its global leader. Many conservatives around the world see Putin’s strong, manly authority, his defense of traditional values and his enthusiastic embrace of orthodox faith, and they see their aspirations in human form. Right-wing leaders from Donald Trump in the United States to Marine Le Pen in France to Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines speak of Putin admiringly. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9532129168510437}
The 21st century has become a dark century because the seedbeds of democracy have been neglected and normal historical authoritarianism is on the march. Putin and Xi seem confident that the winds of history are at their back. Writing in The Times a few weeks ago, Hill said that Putin believes the United States is in the same predicament Russia was in during the 1990s — “weakened at home and in retreat abroad.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7537552118301392}
Putin, Xi and the other global conservatives make comprehensive critiques of liberalism and the failings of liberal society. Unlike past authoritarians they have the massive power of modern surveillance technology to control their citizens. Russian troops are on the border of Ukraine because Putin needs to create the kind of disordered world that people like him thrive in. “The problem Russia has faced since the end of the Cold War is that the greatness Putin and many Russians seek cannot be achieved in a world that is secure and stable,” Kagan writes in “The Jungle Grows Back.” “To achieve greatness on the world stage, Russia must bring the world back to a past when neither Russians nor anyone else enjoyed security.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8898708820343018}
Will the liberals of the world be able to hold off the wolves? Strengthen democracy and preserve the rules-based world order? The events of the past few weeks have been fortifying. Joe Biden and the other world leaders have done an impressive job of rallying their collective resolve and pushing to keep Putin within his borders. But the problems of democracy and the liberal order can’t be solved from the top down. Today, across left and right, millions of Americans see U.S. efforts abroad as little more than imperialism, “endless wars” and domination. They don’t believe in the postwar project and refuse to provide popular support for it. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.5543555021286011}
The real problem is in the seedbeds of democracy, the institutions that are supposed to mold a citizenry and make us qualified to practice democracy. To restore those seedbeds, we first have to relearn the wisdom of the founders: We are not as virtuous as we think we are. Americans are no better than anyone else. Democracy is not natural; it is an artificial accomplishment that takes enormous work. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4379841089248657}
Then we need to fortify the institutions that are supposed to teach the democratic skills: how to weigh evidence and commit to truth; how to correct for your own partisan blinders and learn to doubt your own opinions; how to respect people you disagree with; how to avoid catastrophism, conspiracy and apocalyptic thinking; how to avoid supporting demagogues; how to craft complex compromises. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.702106237411499}
Democrats are not born; they are made. If the 21st century is to get brighter as it goes along, we have to get a lot better at making them. We don’t only have to worry about the people tearing down democracy. We have to worry about who is building it up. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8241255283355713}

In the early 1990s I was a roving correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, based in Europe. Some years it felt as if all I did was cover good news: the end of the Soviet Union, Ukrainians voting for independence, German reunification, the spread of democracy across Eastern Europe, Mandela coming out of prison and the end of apartheid, the Oslo peace process that seemed to bring stability to the Middle East. I obsess about those years now. I obsess about them because the good times did not last. History is reverting toward barbarism. We have an authoritarian strongman in Russia threatening to invade his neighbor, an increasingly authoritarian China waging genocide on its people and threatening Taiwan, cyberattacks undermining the world order, democracy in retreat worldwide, thuggish populists across the West undermining nations from within. Evidence What the hell happened? Why were the hopes of the 1990s not realized? What is the key factor that has made the 21st century so dark, regressive and dangerous? Claim The normal thing to say is that the liberal world order is in crisis. But just saying that doesn’t explain why. Why are people rejecting liberalism? What weakness in liberalism are its enemies exploiting? What is at the root of this dark century? Let me offer one explanation. Liberalism is a way of life built on respect for the dignity of each individual. A liberal order, John Stuart Mill suggested, is one in which people are free to conduct “experiments in living” so you wind up with “a large variety in types of character.” There’s no one best way to live, so liberals celebrate freedom, personal growth and diversity. Many of America’s founders were fervent believers in liberal democracy — up to a point. They had a profound respect for individual virtue, but also individual frailty. Samuel Adams said, “Ambitions and lust for power … are predominant passions in the breasts of most men.” Patrick Henry admitted to feelings of dread when he contemplated the “depravity of human nature.” One delegate to the constitutional convention said that the people “lack information and are constantly liable to be misled.” Evidence Our founders were aware that majorities are easily led by ambitious demagogues. Claim So our founders built a system that respected popular opinion and majority rule while trying to build guardrails to check popular passion and prejudice. The crimes of the constitutional order are by now well known. It acquiesced to the existence of slavery and prolonged that institution for nearly another century. Early democratic systems enfranchised only a small share of adult Americans. But the genius of the Constitution was in its attempt to move toward democracy while trying to prevent undue concentrations of power. The founders divided power among the branches. They built in a whole series of republican checks, so that demagogues and populist crazes would not sweep over the land. “They designed a constitution for fallen people,” the historian Robert Tracy McKenzie writes in his book “We the Fallen People.” “Its genius lay in how it held in tension two seemingly incompatible beliefs: first, that the majority must generally prevail; and second, that the majority is predisposed to seek personal advantage above the common good.” While the Constitution guarded against abuses of power, the founders recognized that a much more important set of civic practices would mold people to be capable of being self-governing citizens: Churches were meant to teach virtue; leaders were to receive classical education, so they might understand human virtue and vice and the fragility of democracy; everyday citizens were to lead their lives as yeoman farmers so they might learn to live simply and work hard; civic associations and local government were to instill the habits of public service; patriotic rituals were observed to instill shared love of country; newspapers and magazines were there (more in theory than in fact) to create a well-informed citizenry; etiquette rules and democratic manners were adopted to encourage social equality and mutual respect. Think of it like farming. Planting the seeds is like establishing a democracy. But for democracy to function you have to till and fertilize the soil, erect fences, pull up weeds, prune the early growth. The founders knew that democracy is not natural. It takes a lot of cultivation to make democracy work. American foreign policy had a second founding after World War II. For much of our history Americans were content to prosper behind the safety of the oceans. But after having been dragged into two world wars, a generation of Americans realized the old attitude wasn’t working any more and America, following the leadership of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, would have to help build a liberal world order if it was to remain secure. The postwar generation was a bit like the founding generation. Its leaders — from Truman to George F. Kennan to Reinhold Niebuhr — championed democracy, but they had no illusions about the depravity of human beings. They’d read their history and understood that stretching back thousands of years, war, authoritarianism, exploitation, great powers crushing little ones — these were just the natural state of human societies. If America was to be secure, Americans would have to plant the seeds of democracy, but also do all the work of cultivation so those seeds could flourish. Americans oversaw the creation of peaceful democracies from the ruins of military dictatorships in Germany and Japan. They funded the Marshall Plan. They helped build multinational institutions like NATO, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund. American military might stood ready to push back against the wolves who threatened the world order — sometimes effectively, as in Europe, but oftentimes, as in Vietnam and Iraq, recklessly and self-destructively. America championed democracy and human rights, at least when the Communists were violating them (not so much when our dictator allies across, say, Latin America were). Evidence Just as America’s founders understood that democracy is not natural, the postwar generation understood that peace is not natural — it has to be tended and cultivated from the frailties of human passion and greed. Claim Over the past few generations that hopeful but sober view of human nature has faded. What’s been called the Culture of Narcissism took hold, with the view that human beings should be unshackled from restraint. You can trust yourself to be unselfish! Democracy and world peace were taken for granted. As Robert Kagan put it in his book “The Jungle Grows Back”: “We have lived so long inside the bubble of the liberal order that we can imagine no other kind of world. We think it is natural and normal, even inevitable.” If people are naturally good, we no longer have to do the hard agricultural work of cultivating virtuous citizens or fighting against human frailty. The Western advisers I covered in Russia in the early 1990s thought a lot about privatization and market reforms and very little about how to prevent greedy monsters from stealing the whole country. They had a naïve view of human nature. Even in America, over the past decades, the institutions that earlier generations thought were essential to molding a democratic citizenry have withered or malfunctioned. Many churches and media outlets have gone partisan. Civics education has receded. Neighborhood organizations have shrunk. Patriotic rituals are out of fashion. What happens when you don’t tend the seedbeds of democracy? Chaos? War? No, you return to normal. The 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th centuries were normal. Big countries like China, Russia and Turkey are ruled by fierce leaders with massive power. That’s normal. Small aristocracies in many nations hog gigantic shares of their nations’ wealth. That’s normal. Many people come to despise cultural outsiders, like immigrants. Normal. Global affairs resembles the law of the jungle, with big countries threatening small ones. This is the way it’s been for most of human history. In normal times, people crave order and leaders like Vladimir Putin arise to give it to them. Putin and Xi Jinping have arisen to be the 21st century’s paradigmatic men. Putin has established political order in Russia by reviving the Russian strong state tradition and by concentrating power in the hands of one man. He has established economic order through a grand bargain with oligarch-led firms, with him as the ultimate C.E.O. As Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy write in their book, “Mr. Putin,” corruption is the glue that holds the system together. Everybody’s wealth is deliberately tainted, so Putin has the power to accuse anyone of corruption and remove anyone at any time. He offers cultural order. He embraces the Russian Orthodox Church and rails against the postmodern godlessness of the West. He scorns homosexuality and transgenderism. Putin has redefined global conservatism and made himself its global leader. Many conservatives around the world see Putin’s strong, manly authority, his defense of traditional values and his enthusiastic embrace of orthodox faith, and they see their aspirations in human form. Right-wing leaders from Donald Trump in the United States to Marine Le Pen in France to Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines speak of Putin admiringly. The 21st century has become a dark century because the seedbeds of democracy have been neglected and normal historical authoritarianism is on the march. Putin and Xi seem confident that the winds of history are at their back. Writing in The Times a few weeks ago, Hill said that Putin believes the United States is in the same predicament Russia was in during the 1990s — “weakened at home and in retreat abroad.” Putin, Xi and the other global conservatives make comprehensive critiques of liberalism and the failings of liberal society. Unlike past authoritarians they have the massive power of modern surveillance technology to control their citizens. Russian troops are on the border of Ukraine because Putin needs to create the kind of disordered world that people like him thrive in. “The problem Russia has faced since the end of the Cold War is that the greatness Putin and many Russians seek cannot be achieved in a world that is secure and stable,” Kagan writes in “The Jungle Grows Back.” “To achieve greatness on the world stage, Russia must bring the world back to a past when neither Russians nor anyone else enjoyed security.” Evidence Will the liberals of the world be able to hold off the wolves? Strengthen democracy and preserve the rules-based world order? The events of the past few weeks have been fortifying. Joe Biden and the other world leaders have done an impressive job of rallying their collective resolve and pushing to keep Putin within his borders. But the problems of democracy and the liberal order can’t be solved from the top down. Today, across left and right, millions of Americans see U.S. efforts abroad as little more than imperialism, “endless wars” and domination. They don’t believe in the postwar project and refuse to provide popular support for it. Concluding Statement The real problem is in the seedbeds of democracy, the institutions that are supposed to mold a citizenry and make us qualified to practice democracy. To restore those seedbeds, we first have to relearn the wisdom of the founders: We are not as virtuous as we think we are. Americans are no better than anyone else. Democracy is not natural; it is an artificial accomplishment that takes enormous work. Then we need to fortify the institutions that are supposed to teach the democratic skills: how to weigh evidence and commit to truth; how to correct for your own partisan blinders and learn to doubt your own opinions; how to respect people you disagree with; how to avoid catastrophism, conspiracy and apocalyptic thinking; how to avoid supporting demagogues; how to craft complex compromises. Democrats are not born; they are made. If the 21st century is to get brighter as it goes along, we have to get a lot better at making them. We don’t only have to worry about the people tearing down democracy. We have to worry about who is building it up. Evidence

nytimes\london-highgate-cemetery-dispatch.txt

Using custom data configuration default-9f700c1ef061df5e

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-9f700c1ef061df5e\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-9f700c1ef061df5e\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

LONDON — Vines crawl up headstones, tipping them on their side. Roots overtake tombs as if reclaiming them for the earth. On one toppled cross, a message: “Peace, Perfect Peace.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.594359278678894}
This is the final resting place for about 170,000 Londoners, among them George Eliot, Karl Marx and Henry Moore. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6700843572616577}
Perched on a steep hillside peering over the capital city, Highgate Cemetery, a Victorian graveyard that is still in use today, is a tangle of monuments partly engulfed by a forest that has sprung up around it. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.5363481640815735}
To stroll through its meandering trails is to experience a catalog of Victorian lives, the great and the small, the rogues and the upstanding citizens, as well as the Victorian way of death. Many in 19th-century Britain’s burgeoning middle-classes prepared all of their working lives for a magnificent funeral and burial site as a way to prove their worthiness for entry to heaven — often leaving little or nothing for their survivors. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7697140574455261}
While that world has long since passed, for many today, Highgate is simply a welcome place of refuge from the sprawling city below, particularly in the Covid era. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4413301348686218}
“It’s this tranquil city of the dead, in contrast to the city of the living below,” said Ian Dungavell, the chief executive of the Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust, a group that saved the site from even greater dereliction in the 1980s and now manages it. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7726300954818726}
During Britain’s first lockdown, when people were allowed to leave their homes for only necessities and exercise, the cemetery began to see a surge in visitors as Londoners looked for secluded outside spaces to escape — and to evade the virus. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6412138938903809}
The site also took on a new resonance, Dr. Dungavell said, as so many people’s lives have been touched by illness and death during the pandemic. Britain has recorded about 160,000 deaths since it began in early 2020. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.89113450050354}
“A phenomenal number of people have died throughout the course of the pandemic, in this country and, obviously, around the world,” he said. “I think very few people have been able to go through the pandemic and not think about their own mortality.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7512460947036743}
On a bright morning in early February, daffodils were just beginning to poke through the soil between the rows of teetering gravestones, and dappled light peeked through the trees that sprouted up here during decades of neglect. The gothic beauty of the overgrown cemetery is seemingly a far cry from what its designers intended. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.9227589964866638}
Founded in 1839 on a site with a sweeping view of the city, Highgate Cemetery was one of Victorian London’s “Magnificent Seven” commercial graveyards, the first to be built on the outskirts of town to help ease the burden on overcrowded churchyards. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5458182692527771}
But the once carefully manicured tract fell into disrepair shortly after World War II, when its owners went bankrupt. As maintenance was neglected, weeds, vines and self-seeding trees took over. And vandalism became more frequent. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8236954212188721}
In the 1980s, a group that came to be known as the Friends of Highgate Trust rescued the site. The group maintains the site and welcomes visitors, for a nominal fee, and tries to ensure access for the families of those buried there. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7989953756332397}
The west side of the cemetery opened first and includes the most elaborate tombs, those designed to vault their occupants into the afterlife, while the east side has more contemporary graves. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6160289645195007}
The centerpiece of the west side is “Egyptian Avenue,” which features a row of vaults with iron doors that mimic the tombs of pharaohs. The mortar now falls from the brick underneath. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8630678653717041}
Among them are the resting places of Radclyffe Hall, a famed poet and novelist known for the semi-autobiographical book “The Well of Loneliness,” about a lesbian love story, and her partner, Mabel Veronica Batten, a famous singer — all of this at a time when laws criminalizing homosexuality were often brutally enforced.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9448153972625732}
Many of the tombs provide clues to the lives of those now lying there: A sleeping lion atop the grave of a famed owner of a Victorian traveling menagerie, a mourning dog at the foot of his owner’s headstone. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8175255060195923}
“It’s a whole field of graves — it’s a whole field of loss — and you can’t but reflect on where you fit into that and know it will happen to you, and life goes on,” Dr. Dungavell said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5954380631446838}
At the grave of Alexander V. Litvinenko, a former K.G.B. officer turned enemy of the Kremlin, who was buried in Highgate in 2006 after being poisoned at a London hotel (most likely at the command of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, a 2016 British inquiry report said), a cutoff column symbolizes a life cut short. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9726981520652771}
Steps away, the headstone of a young woman — Emma Wallace Gray — details a horrifying death at 19, explaining in elaborate detail how her dress caught fire and she was badly burned. She died 10 days later, on Oct. 20, 1845. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.5322309732437134}
“In bloom of youth when others fondly cling to life, I prayed mid agonies for death,” her epitaph reads. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4044523239135742}
At the foot of her grave, snowdrops poked up through the soil, their white blooms stooped like heads hung in mourning. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.5100114345550537}
The somber epitaphs and the stories of these lost lives have proved to be a draw for introspective visitors looking for time to themselves. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5348708629608154}
Licia Proserpio, 37, an Italian academic with a shock of bright blue hair and a love of history, wove her way along the narrow path between the graves and paused for a moment at a site. She said her visit had given her some time for self-reflection. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7885797023773193}
“You can wander around with your thoughts,” she said.  {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5843877792358398}
Mandy Wootton and Lynn Cook, who visited Highgate that same day, said that the cemetery had prompted conversations about end-of-life decisions — whether they wanted to be buried or cremated, and how they wanted to be remembered. But it had also been a life-affirming experience, they said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.921802282333374}
“It’s about that — live now, carpe diem, the age old saying,” Ms. Cook said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.40154898166656494}
Perhaps the most famous person buried in Highgate is Marx, whose impressive tomb on the east side of the cemetery features a giant bronze bust that is not universally admired. Set amid a sprinkling of graves of other noted socialist figures, it draws visitors from around the world. It has also been the site of a number of acts of vandalism in recent years. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9684614539146423}
Alex Keros, 32, and his partner, Irene Pappa, 30, both Greek and living in London, had a particular interest in visiting Marx’s tomb recently.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6906014680862427}
“We are more or less politically aligned — we are left-minded,” Mr. Keros said. “But also, there are a lot of poets and literary figures buried here.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5733528137207031}
The east cemetery is also filled with many newer graves, their headstones jutting up from the hillside like crooked teeth. And the epitaphs are more personal: Gone are the Victorian odes to piety that dominate the older section of the cemetery. In their place are snippets of a life. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9785682559013367}
For Patrick Caulfield, a famed British painter most often associated with Pop Art and who died in 2005, the message he left behind was a direct one. Spelled out on his granite step-design headstone in bold cut letters was one simple word: “D E A D.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9257120490074158}
Nearby is the grave of Jeremy Beadle, who died in 2008. “Writer, presenter, curator of oddities. Ask my friends,” his headstone reads. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5396390557289124}
And across a path lies “Gordon Belle (Middle name Ernest, though he placed no importance on it.)” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.721684455871582}
Two friends puzzling over a map of the cemetery’s winding trails, Kristin Brooks-Dowsett, 33, and Claudia Kowalczyk, 32, who had set aside the day for some outdoor exploring together, said they enjoyed learning about the lives lived. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9258248209953308}
“I think it tells these amazing stories,” Ms. Brooks-Dowsett said. “I don’t think we tell stories enough these days.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.28975555300712585}
She said that she had visited Highgate before, and that she was comfortable with the idea of death. It helps that her mother is a funeral director in her native Australia. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9009279608726501}
“I am not afraid of death; are you afraid of death?” she turned to ask her friend. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.3121434152126312}
“Absolutely,” Ms. Kowalczyk said, without missing a beat. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3221038281917572}
“I’m not,” Ms. Brooks-Dowsett replied. “I think it will be fine.” {'label': 'Position', 'score': 0.5245317220687866}

LONDON — Vines crawl up headstones, tipping them on their side. Roots overtake tombs as if reclaiming them for the earth. On one toppled cross, a message: “Peace, Perfect Peace.” This is the final resting place for about 170,000 Londoners, among them George Eliot, Karl Marx and Henry Moore. Evidence Perched on a steep hillside peering over the capital city, Highgate Cemetery, a Victorian graveyard that is still in use today, is a tangle of monuments partly engulfed by a forest that has sprung up around it. Lead To stroll through its meandering trails is to experience a catalog of Victorian lives, the great and the small, the rogues and the upstanding citizens, as well as the Victorian way of death. Many in 19th-century Britain’s burgeoning middle-classes prepared all of their working lives for a magnificent funeral and burial site as a way to prove their worthiness for entry to heaven — often leaving little or nothing for their survivors. Evidence While that world has long since passed, for many today, Highgate is simply a welcome place of refuge from the sprawling city below, particularly in the Covid era. Claim “It’s this tranquil city of the dead, in contrast to the city of the living below,” said Ian Dungavell, the chief executive of the Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust, a group that saved the site from even greater dereliction in the 1980s and now manages it. During Britain’s first lockdown, when people were allowed to leave their homes for only necessities and exercise, the cemetery began to see a surge in visitors as Londoners looked for secluded outside spaces to escape — and to evade the virus. The site also took on a new resonance, Dr. Dungavell said, as so many people’s lives have been touched by illness and death during the pandemic. Britain has recorded about 160,000 deaths since it began in early 2020. “A phenomenal number of people have died throughout the course of the pandemic, in this country and, obviously, around the world,” he said. “I think very few people have been able to go through the pandemic and not think about their own mortality.” Evidence On a bright morning in early February, daffodils were just beginning to poke through the soil between the rows of teetering gravestones, and dappled light peeked through the trees that sprouted up here during decades of neglect. The gothic beauty of the overgrown cemetery is seemingly a far cry from what its designers intended. Lead Founded in 1839 on a site with a sweeping view of the city, Highgate Cemetery was one of Victorian London’s “Magnificent Seven” commercial graveyards, the first to be built on the outskirts of town to help ease the burden on overcrowded churchyards. Evidence But the once carefully manicured tract fell into disrepair shortly after World War II, when its owners went bankrupt. As maintenance was neglected, weeds, vines and self-seeding trees took over. And vandalism became more frequent. Rebuttal In the 1980s, a group that came to be known as the Friends of Highgate Trust rescued the site. The group maintains the site and welcomes visitors, for a nominal fee, and tries to ensure access for the families of those buried there. The west side of the cemetery opened first and includes the most elaborate tombs, those designed to vault their occupants into the afterlife, while the east side has more contemporary graves. The centerpiece of the west side is “Egyptian Avenue,” which features a row of vaults with iron doors that mimic the tombs of pharaohs. The mortar now falls from the brick underneath. Among them are the resting places of Radclyffe Hall, a famed poet and novelist known for the semi-autobiographical book “The Well of Loneliness,” about a lesbian love story, and her partner, Mabel Veronica Batten, a famous singer — all of this at a time when laws criminalizing homosexuality were often brutally enforced. Many of the tombs provide clues to the lives of those now lying there: A sleeping lion atop the grave of a famed owner of a Victorian traveling menagerie, a mourning dog at the foot of his owner’s headstone. “It’s a whole field of graves — it’s a whole field of loss — and you can’t but reflect on where you fit into that and know it will happen to you, and life goes on,” Dr. Dungavell said. At the grave of Alexander V. Litvinenko, a former K.G.B. officer turned enemy of the Kremlin, who was buried in Highgate in 2006 after being poisoned at a London hotel (most likely at the command of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, a 2016 British inquiry report said), a cutoff column symbolizes a life cut short. Evidence Steps away, the headstone of a young woman — Emma Wallace Gray — details a horrifying death at 19, explaining in elaborate detail how her dress caught fire and she was badly burned. She died 10 days later, on Oct. 20, 1845. Lead “In bloom of youth when others fondly cling to life, I prayed mid agonies for death,” her epitaph reads. Evidence At the foot of her grave, snowdrops poked up through the soil, their white blooms stooped like heads hung in mourning. Lead The somber epitaphs and the stories of these lost lives have proved to be a draw for introspective visitors looking for time to themselves. Claim Licia Proserpio, 37, an Italian academic with a shock of bright blue hair and a love of history, wove her way along the narrow path between the graves and paused for a moment at a site. She said her visit had given her some time for self-reflection. Evidence “You can wander around with your thoughts,” she said. Claim Mandy Wootton and Lynn Cook, who visited Highgate that same day, said that the cemetery had prompted conversations about end-of-life decisions — whether they wanted to be buried or cremated, and how they wanted to be remembered. But it had also been a life-affirming experience, they said. “It’s about that — live now, carpe diem, the age old saying,” Ms. Cook said. Perhaps the most famous person buried in Highgate is Marx, whose impressive tomb on the east side of the cemetery features a giant bronze bust that is not universally admired. Set amid a sprinkling of graves of other noted socialist figures, it draws visitors from around the world. It has also been the site of a number of acts of vandalism in recent years. Alex Keros, 32, and his partner, Irene Pappa, 30, both Greek and living in London, had a particular interest in visiting Marx’s tomb recently. “We are more or less politically aligned — we are left-minded,” Mr. Keros said. “But also, there are a lot of poets and literary figures buried here.” The east cemetery is also filled with many newer graves, their headstones jutting up from the hillside like crooked teeth. And the epitaphs are more personal: Gone are the Victorian odes to piety that dominate the older section of the cemetery. In their place are snippets of a life. For Patrick Caulfield, a famed British painter most often associated with Pop Art and who died in 2005, the message he left behind was a direct one. Spelled out on his granite step-design headstone in bold cut letters was one simple word: “D E A D.” Nearby is the grave of Jeremy Beadle, who died in 2008. “Writer, presenter, curator of oddities. Ask my friends,” his headstone reads. Evidence And across a path lies “Gordon Belle (Middle name Ernest, though he placed no importance on it.)” Claim Two friends puzzling over a map of the cemetery’s winding trails, Kristin Brooks-Dowsett, 33, and Claudia Kowalczyk, 32, who had set aside the day for some outdoor exploring together, said they enjoyed learning about the lives lived. “I think it tells these amazing stories,” Ms. Brooks-Dowsett said. “I don’t think we tell stories enough these days.” She said that she had visited Highgate before, and that she was comfortable with the idea of death. It helps that her mother is a funeral director in her native Australia. Evidence “I am not afraid of death; are you afraid of death?” she turned to ask her friend. Lead “Absolutely,” Ms. Kowalczyk said, without missing a beat. Claim “I’m not,” Ms. Brooks-Dowsett replied. “I think it will be fine.” Position

nytimes\mall-fight-bridgewater-commons-nj.txt

Using custom data configuration default-86d3ca202336d66a

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-86d3ca202336d66a\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-86d3ca202336d66a\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

It was a routine scuffle that normally would have gotten little attention: two teenagers taking swings at each other in a New Jersey mall. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7119939923286438}
But when the police arrived and pulled them apart, one teenager, who is Black, was placed in handcuffs. The other one, who is white, was allowed to sit unrestrained on a couch. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.787478506565094}
The fight, which took place at the Bridgewater Commons mall on Saturday, was captured in a video that has been viewed more than 1.8 million times on Twitter. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6380353569984436}
“The appearance of what is racially disparate treatment,” Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey said at a news conference on Wednesday, “is deeply, deeply disturbing.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5409237742424011}
On Monday, the Bridgewater Police Department wrote on Facebook, “We recognize that this video has made members of our community upset and are calling for an internal affairs investigation.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7031759023666382}
In a letter to residents on Tuesday, the mayor of Bridgewater said that the township’s police chief had asked the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office to look into the matter. The New Jersey State Conference of the NAACP is calling for the officers involved in the episode to be immediately removed from the force pending an investigation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9694002270698547}
The family of the Black teenager, Z’Kye Husain, 14, is working with Benjamin Crump, the civil rights lawyer who represented the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other high-profile victims of police brutality against Black people. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8788919448852539}
In a brief telephone interview on Thursday, Z’Kye’s mother, who asked that she be identified only by her first name, Eboné, said her son remained in handcuffs for about 20 to 30 minutes. The white teenager, who Mr. Crump said was in the 11th grade, was not handcuffed, Eboné said. No charges were filed against either teenager, she said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9875078797340393}
“The cops said it was just protocol for a situation like that for them to put the kids in handcuffs,” she said. “It just so happens my son was the only one with the handcuffs on.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7827147245407104}
A spokesman for the Bridgewater Police Department referred questions to the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office, which did not respond to requests for comment. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7690443992614746}
Z’Kye’s mother said her son was at the mall with friends around 7:30 p.m. on Saturday when the white teenager started harassing one of Z’Kye’s friends, who is in the seventh grade. Z’Kye defended his friend, she said, as other teenagers at the mall began recording the encounter with their phones. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9736440777778625}
In the video, the white teenager, who is wearing a dark sweatshirt, jabs a finger near Z’Kye’s face. Z’Kye pushes his hand away. Then the white teenager shoves Z’Kye in the chest with both hands. Z’Kye stumbles back. Then, both teens start throwing punches as the crowd around them backs away. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9715207815170288}
The older teenager tackles Z’Kye onto a couch. More punches are thrown. The white teenager tackles Z’Kye and is above him when two uniformed officers, who appear to be white, arrive. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9679321050643921}
The officers throw the white teenager toward the couch and one briefly stays with him as the other officer tackles Z’Kye to the floor and begins to handcuff him. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8832456469535828}
The officer who was with the white teenager on the couch leaves him there to help restrain Z’Kye, both officers placing their knees on his back. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6343768239021301}
The white teenager stands up and appears to take a few small steps toward the officers and Z’Kye. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3674086332321167}
The video ends as one officer picks Z’Kye off the ground and the other walks over to the white teenager and puts a hand on his chest as if to guide him back to the couch. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7093422412872314}
“Yo, it’s because he’s Black,” one bystander says before the video ends. “Racially motivated.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.48431265354156494}
A Bridgewater Commons spokeswoman said both teenagers had been banned from the mall for three years. She declined further comment, citing the developing investigation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9292571544647217}
Mr. Crump said other videos of the fight could surface showing more of the encounter and the officers’ response to it. He also said the episode was important because “too many of us do get killed when we’re wrongfully accused and falsely accused.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9589489102363586}
Mayor Matthew Moench of Bridgewater Township, which is about 30 miles north of Trenton, told residents in his letter that it was “not appropriate for me or any other Township official to comment any further” because an investigation was underway. Mr. Moench did not respond to telephone calls and email messages seeking comment. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9496057033538818}
Township officials also canceled a previously scheduled town hall meeting on Wednesday, citing “the volume and nature of communications that have been received by our Township staff and Police Department,” according to a letter posted on the township’s website. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7845878005027771}

It was a routine scuffle that normally would have gotten little attention: two teenagers taking swings at each other in a New Jersey mall. Evidence But when the police arrived and pulled them apart, one teenager, who is Black, was placed in handcuffs. The other one, who is white, was allowed to sit unrestrained on a couch. Rebuttal The fight, which took place at the Bridgewater Commons mall on Saturday, was captured in a video that has been viewed more than 1.8 million times on Twitter. “The appearance of what is racially disparate treatment,” Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey said at a news conference on Wednesday, “is deeply, deeply disturbing.” On Monday, the Bridgewater Police Department wrote on Facebook, “We recognize that this video has made members of our community upset and are calling for an internal affairs investigation.” In a letter to residents on Tuesday, the mayor of Bridgewater said that the township’s police chief had asked the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office to look into the matter. The New Jersey State Conference of the NAACP is calling for the officers involved in the episode to be immediately removed from the force pending an investigation. The family of the Black teenager, Z’Kye Husain, 14, is working with Benjamin Crump, the civil rights lawyer who represented the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other high-profile victims of police brutality against Black people. In a brief telephone interview on Thursday, Z’Kye’s mother, who asked that she be identified only by her first name, Eboné, said her son remained in handcuffs for about 20 to 30 minutes. The white teenager, who Mr. Crump said was in the 11th grade, was not handcuffed, Eboné said. No charges were filed against either teenager, she said. “The cops said it was just protocol for a situation like that for them to put the kids in handcuffs,” she said. “It just so happens my son was the only one with the handcuffs on.” A spokesman for the Bridgewater Police Department referred questions to the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office, which did not respond to requests for comment. Z’Kye’s mother said her son was at the mall with friends around 7:30 p.m. on Saturday when the white teenager started harassing one of Z’Kye’s friends, who is in the seventh grade. Z’Kye defended his friend, she said, as other teenagers at the mall began recording the encounter with their phones. In the video, the white teenager, who is wearing a dark sweatshirt, jabs a finger near Z’Kye’s face. Z’Kye pushes his hand away. Then the white teenager shoves Z’Kye in the chest with both hands. Z’Kye stumbles back. Then, both teens start throwing punches as the crowd around them backs away. The older teenager tackles Z’Kye onto a couch. More punches are thrown. The white teenager tackles Z’Kye and is above him when two uniformed officers, who appear to be white, arrive. The officers throw the white teenager toward the couch and one briefly stays with him as the other officer tackles Z’Kye to the floor and begins to handcuff him. The officer who was with the white teenager on the couch leaves him there to help restrain Z’Kye, both officers placing their knees on his back. The white teenager stands up and appears to take a few small steps toward the officers and Z’Kye. The video ends as one officer picks Z’Kye off the ground and the other walks over to the white teenager and puts a hand on his chest as if to guide him back to the couch. “Yo, it’s because he’s Black,” one bystander says before the video ends. “Racially motivated.” A Bridgewater Commons spokeswoman said both teenagers had been banned from the mall for three years. She declined further comment, citing the developing investigation. Mr. Crump said other videos of the fight could surface showing more of the encounter and the officers’ response to it. He also said the episode was important because “too many of us do get killed when we’re wrongfully accused and falsely accused.” Mayor Matthew Moench of Bridgewater Township, which is about 30 miles north of Trenton, told residents in his letter that it was “not appropriate for me or any other Township official to comment any further” because an investigation was underway. Mr. Moench did not respond to telephone calls and email messages seeking comment. Township officials also canceled a previously scheduled town hall meeting on Wednesday, citing “the volume and nature of communications that have been received by our Township staff and Police Department,” according to a letter posted on the township’s website. Evidence

nytimes\melania-trump-charity-donation.txt

Using custom data configuration default-4dd37ccae19565a6

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-4dd37ccae19565a6\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-4dd37ccae19565a6\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

WASHINGTON — An Oklahoma school that specializes in teaching advanced computer science skills has rejected an offered donation by Melania Trump, who said on Friday that “politics got in the way of my mission to support children.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.780186653137207}
Mrs. Trump disclosed the clash with the school in a statement defending her charitable fund-raising efforts since she left the White House, which she has said are focused on supporting foster children. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7090475559234619}
Mrs. Trump did not name the school that she said rejected her donation, noting only that it was “a computer science school founded in Silicon Valley with a campus in Oklahoma.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5133937001228333}
That fits the description of an organization known as Holberton School, a San Francisco-based education company that has more than 30 schools around the world that specialize in computer science training as an alternative to traditional college for students who want to become software engineers. It opened a location in Tulsa, Okla., in 2020. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9168903827667236}
Julien Barbier, the chief executive of Holberton, confirmed on Friday that Mrs. Trump had tried to donate money to the Tulsa school. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6830317378044128}
“We were approached about a scholarship by her team but never reached an agreement on the logistics of the scholarship,” he said, declining to discuss the matter further. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6925590634346008}
Mrs. Trump said that she had offered to make the donation anonymously, with the money intended to support scholarships. She said she had signed an agreement detailing the planned contribution when the school moved to reject it, which she said was part of an effort to “cancel me.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9670184850692749}
“It was made clear to me that the school’s board of directors organized a politically motivated decision,” Mrs. Trump said in her statement, which was posted on her website on Friday. “Obviously, I was disappointed but not surprised. This is not the first time where politics got in the way of my mission to support children.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7705618739128113}
She added that it was at least the second time her efforts to support a charitable cause had been rejected, asserting that a “corporate partner refused an opportunity to further our shared philanthropic goals surrounding my visit to Africa,” which took place in 2018. She provided no other details. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9165127277374268}
Since December, Mrs. Trump has accelerated her efforts to raise or make money — for herself and for charitable causes — holding an online auction last month to sell a white hat she had worn at the White House during a visit by the French president in 2018, as part of what she called the Head of State Collection. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8845992684364319}
She also recently announced plans to host what she called an “exclusive high tea” that she is calling Tulips & Topiaries, selling tickets for as much as $50,000 for “V.I.P. table sponsors.” The money raised from the event, scheduled to be held in Naples, Fla., in April, would be at least partly donated to a cause that supports children in or emerging from foster care, Mrs. Trump has said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9885953068733215}
The money, she told The New York Times in a statement this month, would be used “to provide children within the foster community the ability to secure entry-level jobs within the technology sector,” resembling the mission of the Holberton School. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5608052015304565}
But the planned event in Florida has drawn questions from officials who are investigating whether Mrs. Trump complied with state law. Florida requires anyone soliciting charitable donations to register with the state, and officials there could not find a registration filed on behalf of Mrs. Trump or the programs she said she was raising money for, called Be Best and Fostering the Future. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.807694137096405}
In the statement on Friday, Mrs. Trump said that she did not intend to create her own formal nonprofit organization, registered with Florida or the federal government. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5414684414863586}
Instead, she said, the money raised at the April event would go to Gen Justice, an existing nonprofit also known as Generation Justice that uses legal action to try to improve the foster care system in the United States. Mrs. Trump also said she was working with a conservative nonprofit called the Bradley Impact Fund that had selected the foster-care related charities she intended to support. Both organizations are registered in Florida to raise charitable donations. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9824371933937073}
A spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which oversees charitable giving in the state, declined to comment on Friday about the inquiry. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7598231434822083}
“With the investigation still ongoing, we are not able to comment further at this time,” Erin M. Moffet, the agency spokeswoman, said in an email on Friday. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.44838470220565796}
Mrs. Trump, in a series of public statements, said that she had followed all the state rules. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6233313083648682}
“The media has created a narrative whereby I am trying to act in an illegal or unethical manner,” her statement on Friday said. “That portrayal is simply untrue and adversely affects the children I hope to support. Those who attack my initiatives and create the appearance of impropriety are quite literally dream killers. They have canceled the hopes and dreams of children by trying to cancel me.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.951303243637085}
Mrs. Trump’s moneymaking efforts have only intensified in recent weeks, as she announced a partnership with Parler, the conservative social media site, to use the platform to promote her online sales. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4286091923713684}
She disclosed on Parler this week a plan to sell what she is calling the POTUS TRUMP NFT Collection, which features virtual artwork known as a nonfungible token, or NFT, on USAmemorabilia.com, a website she is creating. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6413177847862244}
A total of 10,000 NFTs will be sold for $50 apiece or possibly more, and will feature “iconic moments from President Trump’s administration, such as the Fourth of July visit to Mount Rushmore and Christmas at the White House.” The sales will take place with cryptocurrency, Mrs. Trump said, as with the earlier auction. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.983551561832428}
She did not indicate where the images from the NFTs would come from, but a former aide questioned in a tweet whether it was appropriate to sell photographs of White House events. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5063270330429077}
“Trump selling the PEOPLE’s House archives?!!” wrote Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former adviser to Mrs. Trump, who had a falling out with the family after a dispute over spending during Mr. Trump’s inauguration. “Is this legal?” {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.8377801179885864}
Asked if the NFT images Mrs. Trump will be selling are based on photographs taken by federal government employees, Mrs. Trump’s office said in a statement that “all images are copyright-free and fall within the purview of the public domain.” That is an apparent reference to a longstanding federal policy that government “creative works” are not protected by copyright law, suggesting she believes that she is entitled to use and profit from them. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.94298255443573}
Her statement made no mention of whether any of the money raised from the sales would support her charitable efforts or simply be collected by Mrs. Trump and her business partners. Mrs. Trump also indicated that images of the virtual artwork she is selling — with names like Air Force One Platinum, First Lady Platinum and Mount Rushmore Platinum — would not be publicly disclosed before they were sold. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9850446581840515}
“Collectors will enjoy an element of surprise, as the artwork of each NFT is revealed only after purchase,” the announcement said. “Of course, collectors can make multiple purchases to own the entire POTUS Trump Collection.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8217494487762451}

WASHINGTON — An Oklahoma school that specializes in teaching advanced computer science skills has rejected an offered donation by Melania Trump, who said on Friday that “politics got in the way of my mission to support children.” Mrs. Trump disclosed the clash with the school in a statement defending her charitable fund-raising efforts since she left the White House, which she has said are focused on supporting foster children. Mrs. Trump did not name the school that she said rejected her donation, noting only that it was “a computer science school founded in Silicon Valley with a campus in Oklahoma.” That fits the description of an organization known as Holberton School, a San Francisco-based education company that has more than 30 schools around the world that specialize in computer science training as an alternative to traditional college for students who want to become software engineers. It opened a location in Tulsa, Okla., in 2020. Julien Barbier, the chief executive of Holberton, confirmed on Friday that Mrs. Trump had tried to donate money to the Tulsa school. “We were approached about a scholarship by her team but never reached an agreement on the logistics of the scholarship,” he said, declining to discuss the matter further. Mrs. Trump said that she had offered to make the donation anonymously, with the money intended to support scholarships. She said she had signed an agreement detailing the planned contribution when the school moved to reject it, which she said was part of an effort to “cancel me.” “It was made clear to me that the school’s board of directors organized a politically motivated decision,” Mrs. Trump said in her statement, which was posted on her website on Friday. “Obviously, I was disappointed but not surprised. This is not the first time where politics got in the way of my mission to support children.” She added that it was at least the second time her efforts to support a charitable cause had been rejected, asserting that a “corporate partner refused an opportunity to further our shared philanthropic goals surrounding my visit to Africa,” which took place in 2018. She provided no other details. Since December, Mrs. Trump has accelerated her efforts to raise or make money — for herself and for charitable causes — holding an online auction last month to sell a white hat she had worn at the White House during a visit by the French president in 2018, as part of what she called the Head of State Collection. She also recently announced plans to host what she called an “exclusive high tea” that she is calling Tulips & Topiaries, selling tickets for as much as $50,000 for “V.I.P. table sponsors.” The money raised from the event, scheduled to be held in Naples, Fla., in April, would be at least partly donated to a cause that supports children in or emerging from foster care, Mrs. Trump has said. The money, she told The New York Times in a statement this month, would be used “to provide children within the foster community the ability to secure entry-level jobs within the technology sector,” resembling the mission of the Holberton School. Evidence But the planned event in Florida has drawn questions from officials who are investigating whether Mrs. Trump complied with state law. Florida requires anyone soliciting charitable donations to register with the state, and officials there could not find a registration filed on behalf of Mrs. Trump or the programs she said she was raising money for, called Be Best and Fostering the Future. Rebuttal In the statement on Friday, Mrs. Trump said that she did not intend to create her own formal nonprofit organization, registered with Florida or the federal government. Instead, she said, the money raised at the April event would go to Gen Justice, an existing nonprofit also known as Generation Justice that uses legal action to try to improve the foster care system in the United States. Mrs. Trump also said she was working with a conservative nonprofit called the Bradley Impact Fund that had selected the foster-care related charities she intended to support. Both organizations are registered in Florida to raise charitable donations. A spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which oversees charitable giving in the state, declined to comment on Friday about the inquiry. “With the investigation still ongoing, we are not able to comment further at this time,” Erin M. Moffet, the agency spokeswoman, said in an email on Friday. Evidence Mrs. Trump, in a series of public statements, said that she had followed all the state rules. Claim “The media has created a narrative whereby I am trying to act in an illegal or unethical manner,” her statement on Friday said. “That portrayal is simply untrue and adversely affects the children I hope to support. Those who attack my initiatives and create the appearance of impropriety are quite literally dream killers. They have canceled the hopes and dreams of children by trying to cancel me.” Mrs. Trump’s moneymaking efforts have only intensified in recent weeks, as she announced a partnership with Parler, the conservative social media site, to use the platform to promote her online sales. She disclosed on Parler this week a plan to sell what she is calling the POTUS TRUMP NFT Collection, which features virtual artwork known as a nonfungible token, or NFT, on USAmemorabilia.com, a website she is creating. A total of 10,000 NFTs will be sold for $50 apiece or possibly more, and will feature “iconic moments from President Trump’s administration, such as the Fourth of July visit to Mount Rushmore and Christmas at the White House.” The sales will take place with cryptocurrency, Mrs. Trump said, as with the earlier auction. Evidence She did not indicate where the images from the NFTs would come from, but a former aide questioned in a tweet whether it was appropriate to sell photographs of White House events. Claim “Trump selling the PEOPLE’s House archives?!!” wrote Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former adviser to Mrs. Trump, who had a falling out with the family after a dispute over spending during Mr. Trump’s inauguration. “Is this legal?” Lead Asked if the NFT images Mrs. Trump will be selling are based on photographs taken by federal government employees, Mrs. Trump’s office said in a statement that “all images are copyright-free and fall within the purview of the public domain.” That is an apparent reference to a longstanding federal policy that government “creative works” are not protected by copyright law, suggesting she believes that she is entitled to use and profit from them. Her statement made no mention of whether any of the money raised from the sales would support her charitable efforts or simply be collected by Mrs. Trump and her business partners. Mrs. Trump also indicated that images of the virtual artwork she is selling — with names like Air Force One Platinum, First Lady Platinum and Mount Rushmore Platinum — would not be publicly disclosed before they were sold. “Collectors will enjoy an element of surprise, as the artwork of each NFT is revealed only after purchase,” the announcement said. “Of course, collectors can make multiple purchases to own the entire POTUS Trump Collection.” Evidence

nytimes\merkel-cell-carcinoma.txt

Using custom data configuration default-280c8ab59135a75e

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-280c8ab59135a75e\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-280c8ab59135a75e\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

“OK, I give up,” said the 74-year-old man. “I’ll go to the hospital.” His wife of 46 years gave an inner sigh of relief. Her husband was stubborn, a seventh-​generation Mainer, not given to complaining. But a few weeks earlier, she noticed that he was parking his tractor next to the back porch so he could get on it without pulling himself up. Then he needed help getting out of his big chair. Now he could barely walk. It happened so suddenly it scared her. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7259745597839355}
She eased the car right next to the porch. He needed both hands on the railing to get down, grunting with each step. His legs moved awkwardly, as if they had somehow forgotten what to do. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6393219828605652}
At the LincolnHealth-Miles Campus Hospital in nearby Damariscotta, it was clear to the E.R. doctors that the patient wasn’t weak but ataxic, lacking not strength but coordination. Virtually every movement the body makes requires several muscles working together — a collaboration that occurs in the cerebellum. The uncertain and awkward way the patient moved made doctors at LincolnHealth worry that something — maybe a stroke, maybe a tumor — had injured that part of the brain. But two CT scans and an M.R.I. were unrevealing. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9877815246582031}
When his doctors weren’t sure what to do next, the patient decided it was time to go home. His wife was supportive but worried. How could she help him get around? He was a big guy and outweighed her by 50 pounds. And they still needed to figure out what was wrong with him. Couldn’t they try another hospital? Maybe, he said, but first he wanted to go home. So that’s where she took him. Once there, it took only a day for the man to recognize, again, that he couldn’t just tough it out at home. There was another hospital, a larger one a couple of towns over in Brunswick: Mid Coast Hospital. His wife was happy to take him there. Those few steps he took from porch to car, supported by his wife, were the last he would take for weeks. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9776920080184937}
He couldn’t walk, the older man told Dr. Roople Unia, the neurologist on call that day. He could barely stand up, he continued. And that wasn’t the only thing: He was seeing double. And he had a terrible cough. Of course, at 74, he had a bunch of medical problems — diabetes, high blood pressure, some heart disease, even gout. But nothing had laid him this low before. His tanned round face reddened as he surrendered to a violent cough. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9635695219039917}
Unia suspected that his swallow was as uncoordinated as his walk. The esophagus (the swallowing tube) is right next to the trachea (the breathing tube). Normally the epiglottis, a leaf-shaped flap located at the base of the throat, folds over the trachea as we swallow to prevent the food meant for the esophagus from going down the wrong tube. The cough, she suspected, was his body’s last-ditch effort to keep food, liquids and his own saliva out of his lungs. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9897686243057251}
Unia knew from the records from the first hospital visit that this wasn’t a brain tumor or stroke. Could it be a vitamin B12 deficiency? Loss of this key nutrient can cause a wide variety of neurological symptoms — usually difficulty walking and a loss of feeling in the hands and feet, sometimes double vision and trouble swallowing as well. And it’s common — seen in up to 15 percent of those over 60. Vitamin B1 and E deficiencies, while less common, can also cause these kinds of neurological symptoms. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9816973805427551}
Something else that can affect the brain and nerves are autoimmune diseases. These disorders occur when the immune system gears up to take on some kind of invader, and the antibodies generated to protect the body attack it instead. Some of these autoimmune diseases are associated with cancers. These paraneoplastic syndromes, as they are called, are a rare consequence of the immune system’s attacking cancer but can cause devastating injuries to the nervous system as well as other parts of the body. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.991616427898407}
But highest on Unia’s list of suspects was an unusual version of Guillain-Barré syndrome (G.B.S.) known as the Miller Fisher variant. G.B.S. is also an autoimmune disorder, usually triggered by an infection. Antibodies created to fight the infection mistakenly attack the nerves that control movement, usually starting with the legs and ascending up the body. In the Miller Fisher variant of G.B.S., the disease attacks the nerves controlling the muscles of the head and neck as well as those of the feet and legs, causing double vision and difficulty swallowing. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.47863665223121643}
Unia ordered the blood test that looks for this version of G.B.S. But the results could take weeks. In the meantime, the neurologist decided to treat him even without this proof. Treatment involves suppressing the wayward immune system — first with steroids and then, if needed, with intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg), an infusion of antibodies that block the destructive ones of G.B.S. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.962108314037323}
The patient had just finished his last day of treatment when the hospitalist Dmitry Opolinsky took over his care. Opolinsky asked him how he was feeling. Much better, the patient exclaimed, but then exploded into a paroxysm of coughing. Unia had warned Opolinsky that the patient was eager to feel better but that his exam had not really changed since his arrival. Still, it often takes a week or two for any improvement following the IVIg. They needed to give him time. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9810910224914551}
As he waited for his patient to start to get better, Opolinsky kept his eye on the results that were still trickling in. His vitamin B12 was normal. So were the other vitamin deficiencies he was tested for. The biggest disappointment came from the Mayo Clinic, where the neuroimmunology lab looks for evidence of any of a dozen paraneoplastic syndromes. They were all negative. This probably was G.B.S., though nearly a week after treatment, the patient was no better. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9778074026107788}
The next day Opolinsky got a text to call a number he didn’t recognize. The voice, deep with a hint of an Irish accent, identified himself as Dr. Andrew Mc​Keon, co-director of the Mayo Clinic lab. “Oh, yes, we got those results yesterday,” Opolinsky told him. “All negative.” Actually, McKeon interjected, that result was wrong — or rather, incomplete. There was a newly discovered antibody identified a couple of years earlier by McKeon’s lab, still so new that it had not yet made it onto the automated result form used in testing. This patient had a very strong positive result for this antibody, which attacks something known as neuronal intermediate filaments in the brain. “If he’s a smoker,” McKeon predicted, “then he has small-cell lung cancer. If he’s not, he probably has Merkel cell skin cancer.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9643491506576538}
The patient had never smoked, so Opolinsky focused on the possibility that he had this rare type of skin cancer. What Opolinsky remembered from his training was that Merkel cell carcinoma was an aggressive form of skin cancer caused by sun damage and had a much higher rate of spreading than most other forms of skin cancer. He looked at the images on the internet, which showed a bluish red nodule, usually found on the head or face. He didn’t find any of these odd growths, but he ordered a CT scan to look for metastases. There, deep in the patient’s left underarm, was an enlarged lymph node — about the size of a lime. Opolinsky hurried to the patient to feel for the mass, yet even knowing it was there, he couldn’t locate it. But the surgeons could, and removed a mass that tested positive for Merkel cell carcinoma. After his surgery, a PET scan showed that he was free of cancer. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9917196035385132}
It took some time, and an immune-​suppressing medication, but slowly the patient began to recover. That was this past summer. These days he can walk, but only with a walker. And he still coughs a lot. But he’s hopeful that, come spring, he’ll be back on his tractor, even if he has to get onto it from the porch. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8998108506202698}

“OK, I give up,” said the 74-year-old man. “I’ll go to the hospital.” His wife of 46 years gave an inner sigh of relief. Her husband was stubborn, a seventh-​generation Mainer, not given to complaining. But a few weeks earlier, she noticed that he was parking his tractor next to the back porch so he could get on it without pulling himself up. Then he needed help getting out of his big chair. Now he could barely walk. It happened so suddenly it scared her. She eased the car right next to the porch. He needed both hands on the railing to get down, grunting with each step. His legs moved awkwardly, as if they had somehow forgotten what to do. At the LincolnHealth-Miles Campus Hospital in nearby Damariscotta, it was clear to the E.R. doctors that the patient wasn’t weak but ataxic, lacking not strength but coordination. Virtually every movement the body makes requires several muscles working together — a collaboration that occurs in the cerebellum. The uncertain and awkward way the patient moved made doctors at LincolnHealth worry that something — maybe a stroke, maybe a tumor — had injured that part of the brain. But two CT scans and an M.R.I. were unrevealing. When his doctors weren’t sure what to do next, the patient decided it was time to go home. His wife was supportive but worried. How could she help him get around? He was a big guy and outweighed her by 50 pounds. And they still needed to figure out what was wrong with him. Couldn’t they try another hospital? Maybe, he said, but first he wanted to go home. So that’s where she took him. Once there, it took only a day for the man to recognize, again, that he couldn’t just tough it out at home. There was another hospital, a larger one a couple of towns over in Brunswick: Mid Coast Hospital. His wife was happy to take him there. Those few steps he took from porch to car, supported by his wife, were the last he would take for weeks. He couldn’t walk, the older man told Dr. Roople Unia, the neurologist on call that day. He could barely stand up, he continued. And that wasn’t the only thing: He was seeing double. And he had a terrible cough. Of course, at 74, he had a bunch of medical problems — diabetes, high blood pressure, some heart disease, even gout. But nothing had laid him this low before. His tanned round face reddened as he surrendered to a violent cough. Unia suspected that his swallow was as uncoordinated as his walk. The esophagus (the swallowing tube) is right next to the trachea (the breathing tube). Normally the epiglottis, a leaf-shaped flap located at the base of the throat, folds over the trachea as we swallow to prevent the food meant for the esophagus from going down the wrong tube. The cough, she suspected, was his body’s last-ditch effort to keep food, liquids and his own saliva out of his lungs. Unia knew from the records from the first hospital visit that this wasn’t a brain tumor or stroke. Could it be a vitamin B12 deficiency? Loss of this key nutrient can cause a wide variety of neurological symptoms — usually difficulty walking and a loss of feeling in the hands and feet, sometimes double vision and trouble swallowing as well. And it’s common — seen in up to 15 percent of those over 60. Vitamin B1 and E deficiencies, while less common, can also cause these kinds of neurological symptoms. Something else that can affect the brain and nerves are autoimmune diseases. These disorders occur when the immune system gears up to take on some kind of invader, and the antibodies generated to protect the body attack it instead. Some of these autoimmune diseases are associated with cancers. These paraneoplastic syndromes, as they are called, are a rare consequence of the immune system’s attacking cancer but can cause devastating injuries to the nervous system as well as other parts of the body. But highest on Unia’s list of suspects was an unusual version of Guillain-Barré syndrome (G.B.S.) known as the Miller Fisher variant. G.B.S. is also an autoimmune disorder, usually triggered by an infection. Antibodies created to fight the infection mistakenly attack the nerves that control movement, usually starting with the legs and ascending up the body. In the Miller Fisher variant of G.B.S., the disease attacks the nerves controlling the muscles of the head and neck as well as those of the feet and legs, causing double vision and difficulty swallowing. Unia ordered the blood test that looks for this version of G.B.S. But the results could take weeks. In the meantime, the neurologist decided to treat him even without this proof. Treatment involves suppressing the wayward immune system — first with steroids and then, if needed, with intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg), an infusion of antibodies that block the destructive ones of G.B.S. The patient had just finished his last day of treatment when the hospitalist Dmitry Opolinsky took over his care. Opolinsky asked him how he was feeling. Much better, the patient exclaimed, but then exploded into a paroxysm of coughing. Unia had warned Opolinsky that the patient was eager to feel better but that his exam had not really changed since his arrival. Still, it often takes a week or two for any improvement following the IVIg. They needed to give him time. As he waited for his patient to start to get better, Opolinsky kept his eye on the results that were still trickling in. His vitamin B12 was normal. So were the other vitamin deficiencies he was tested for. The biggest disappointment came from the Mayo Clinic, where the neuroimmunology lab looks for evidence of any of a dozen paraneoplastic syndromes. They were all negative. This probably was G.B.S., though nearly a week after treatment, the patient was no better. The next day Opolinsky got a text to call a number he didn’t recognize. The voice, deep with a hint of an Irish accent, identified himself as Dr. Andrew Mc​Keon, co-director of the Mayo Clinic lab. “Oh, yes, we got those results yesterday,” Opolinsky told him. “All negative.” Actually, McKeon interjected, that result was wrong — or rather, incomplete. There was a newly discovered antibody identified a couple of years earlier by McKeon’s lab, still so new that it had not yet made it onto the automated result form used in testing. This patient had a very strong positive result for this antibody, which attacks something known as neuronal intermediate filaments in the brain. “If he’s a smoker,” McKeon predicted, “then he has small-cell lung cancer. If he’s not, he probably has Merkel cell skin cancer.” The patient had never smoked, so Opolinsky focused on the possibility that he had this rare type of skin cancer. What Opolinsky remembered from his training was that Merkel cell carcinoma was an aggressive form of skin cancer caused by sun damage and had a much higher rate of spreading than most other forms of skin cancer. He looked at the images on the internet, which showed a bluish red nodule, usually found on the head or face. He didn’t find any of these odd growths, but he ordered a CT scan to look for metastases. There, deep in the patient’s left underarm, was an enlarged lymph node — about the size of a lime. Opolinsky hurried to the patient to feel for the mass, yet even knowing it was there, he couldn’t locate it. But the surgeons could, and removed a mass that tested positive for Merkel cell carcinoma. After his surgery, a PET scan showed that he was free of cancer. It took some time, and an immune-​suppressing medication, but slowly the patient began to recover. That was this past summer. These days he can walk, but only with a walker. And he still coughs a lot. But he’s hopeful that, come spring, he’ll be back on his tractor, even if he has to get onto it from the porch. Evidence

nytimes\metamates-googlers.txt

Using custom data configuration default-78c87ffcb0c3deec

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-78c87ffcb0c3deec\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-78c87ffcb0c3deec\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. Here is a collection of past columns. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.7628713846206665}
The company we know as Facebook on Tuesday declared that its employees will henceforth be known as “Metamates.” This is apparently a naval reference? And a cognitive scientist who doesn’t use social media was the one who suggested this moniker, in the postscript to an email. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9421728849411011}
All weird. Then again, “Facebookers” was pretty weird, too. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.471498966217041}
The issue is not that Facebook/Meta/whatever picked an awkward name to refer to its employees. The issue is that companies in technology love to use proper nouns for their workers. This is not normal. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6506941914558411}
The thing is, technology is normal now. There was a time when the tech industry was novel and different, and its corporate cultures were, too. But technology is so ingrained in our lives now that many of the company quirks that felt adorable in 2000 now seem like artifice.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4881320595741272}
I humbly suggest that tech companies try acting like the corporate leaders they are. Maybe they could start by rethinking those names. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3304874002933502}
Google employees are called Googlers. New hire Googlers are Nooglers. Former Googlers are Xooglers. There are Pinployees at Pinterest. Twilions work for Twilio. Dashers deliver burritos for DoorDash. Toasters toil for a company that makes newfangled cash registers. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9930166006088257}
Boxers are in the corner at the software company called Box, and Dropboxers at the similarly named Dropbox. Splunk calls its workers Splunkers. It’s a shame. The cave explorer term Spelunkers was right there. HubSpot’s HubSpotters and Amazon’s Amazonians sound like rival teams in the Canadian Football League. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9726538062095642}
Silicon Valley also has Puritans (Pure Storage employees), Palantirians (Palantir) and … wait for it … Coinbaes at the Bitcoin bank Coinbase. (“Bae” is a term of endearment for someone special.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9437913298606873}
Maybe you find this corny or cute. It is both! And if copious bread puns make people feel more connected to their colleagues, then carb me in. OK, that was bad. Sorry. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.833718478679657}
Naming employees is not exclusively but mostly a tech thing. As far as I know, JPMorgan Chase bank tellers are not regularly called “Chasers.” New York Times employees are not called “Gray Ladies” like the newspaper’s old nickname — and if you call me a Gray Lady, I will whack you on the nose with a thick Sunday paper. (Or I would, if I hadn’t gone all digital.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9749389886856079}
I can’t help feeling that these naming conventions for tech workers are a lingering artifact of the era of technology as an oddball species at the zoo of the world. {'label': 'Position', 'score': 0.4262602925300598}
Believe it or not, there was a time when technology was a fringe industry that was desperate for attention. Steve Jobs used to call reporters at home to persuade them to care more about stuff that Apple was doing. Technology companies embraced their outsider and underdog status. It was cool to be different and unwanted. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5550289750099182}
That’s not reality anymore. Technology won, and it’s everything and everywhere. Human communications are inseparable from tech, and so are money, entertainment, agriculture, transportation, our interactions with government and the ways we learn and work. Tech companies and executives are among the wealthiest and most powerful forces on the planet. Elon Musk can move stock markets with tweets from the toilet. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5905621647834778}
Maybe I’m just a mirthless kill joy. (I am.) But the more consequential and ubiquitous technology becomes, the more it feels off base for technology companies to act like oddballs.  {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.29552778601646423}
Some tech quirks are pretty good. Who can argue with free sundaes for employees and desk chairs that double as works of art? And tech people don’t have to be soulless drones. But there must be a happy medium between boring corporate chief executives and the billionaire co-founder of Palantir who pitched his company’s stock while on roller skis and wearing exercise clothing and goggles. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9474672675132751}
As with many things about tech, those proper nouns for corporate workers might need a rethink. Coinbase can keep Coinbaes, though. Truly A+.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6326663494110107}
Tech employees are the new toilet paper, I guess. With the unemployment rate for tech workers nearing zero, potential new hires are growing weary of being pursued all the time. “They think we’re like used-car salesmen,” one recruiter for tech companies told Susan Dominus for The New York Times Magazine. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9379746317863464}
Tech can do only so much about climbing gas and electricity bills. My colleague Brian X. Chen writes about the benefits and limits of energy-saving technologies like the Nest internet-connected thermostat. Brian learned that no gadget can save you from a poorly insulated home. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9641795754432678}
Why does no one have legs in the metaverse? CNN explains. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7656280398368835}
This kitty towers over an elaborate model train set. (The video is from last year, but it always cheers me up.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5558298826217651}
We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.39380958676338196}
If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. You can also read past On Tech columns. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.4619752764701843}

This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. Here is a collection of past columns. Lead The company we know as Facebook on Tuesday declared that its employees will henceforth be known as “Metamates.” This is apparently a naval reference? And a cognitive scientist who doesn’t use social media was the one who suggested this moniker, in the postscript to an email. Evidence All weird. Then again, “Facebookers” was pretty weird, too. Claim The issue is not that Facebook/Meta/whatever picked an awkward name to refer to its employees. The issue is that companies in technology love to use proper nouns for their workers. This is not normal. The thing is, technology is normal now. There was a time when the tech industry was novel and different, and its corporate cultures were, too. But technology is so ingrained in our lives now that many of the company quirks that felt adorable in 2000 now seem like artifice. Evidence I humbly suggest that tech companies try acting like the corporate leaders they are. Maybe they could start by rethinking those names. Claim Google employees are called Googlers. New hire Googlers are Nooglers. Former Googlers are Xooglers. There are Pinployees at Pinterest. Twilions work for Twilio. Dashers deliver burritos for DoorDash. Toasters toil for a company that makes newfangled cash registers. Boxers are in the corner at the software company called Box, and Dropboxers at the similarly named Dropbox. Splunk calls its workers Splunkers. It’s a shame. The cave explorer term Spelunkers was right there. HubSpot’s HubSpotters and Amazon’s Amazonians sound like rival teams in the Canadian Football League. Silicon Valley also has Puritans (Pure Storage employees), Palantirians (Palantir) and … wait for it … Coinbaes at the Bitcoin bank Coinbase. (“Bae” is a term of endearment for someone special.) Maybe you find this corny or cute. It is both! And if copious bread puns make people feel more connected to their colleagues, then carb me in. OK, that was bad. Sorry. Naming employees is not exclusively but mostly a tech thing. As far as I know, JPMorgan Chase bank tellers are not regularly called “Chasers.” New York Times employees are not called “Gray Ladies” like the newspaper’s old nickname — and if you call me a Gray Lady, I will whack you on the nose with a thick Sunday paper. (Or I would, if I hadn’t gone all digital.) Evidence I can’t help feeling that these naming conventions for tech workers are a lingering artifact of the era of technology as an oddball species at the zoo of the world. Position Believe it or not, there was a time when technology was a fringe industry that was desperate for attention. Steve Jobs used to call reporters at home to persuade them to care more about stuff that Apple was doing. Technology companies embraced their outsider and underdog status. It was cool to be different and unwanted. That’s not reality anymore. Technology won, and it’s everything and everywhere. Human communications are inseparable from tech, and so are money, entertainment, agriculture, transportation, our interactions with government and the ways we learn and work. Tech companies and executives are among the wealthiest and most powerful forces on the planet. Elon Musk can move stock markets with tweets from the toilet. Evidence Maybe I’m just a mirthless kill joy. (I am.) But the more consequential and ubiquitous technology becomes, the more it feels off base for technology companies to act like oddballs. Claim Some tech quirks are pretty good. Who can argue with free sundaes for employees and desk chairs that double as works of art? And tech people don’t have to be soulless drones. But there must be a happy medium between boring corporate chief executives and the billionaire co-founder of Palantir who pitched his company’s stock while on roller skis and wearing exercise clothing and goggles. As with many things about tech, those proper nouns for corporate workers might need a rethink. Coinbase can keep Coinbaes, though. Truly A+. Tech employees are the new toilet paper, I guess. With the unemployment rate for tech workers nearing zero, potential new hires are growing weary of being pursued all the time. “They think we’re like used-car salesmen,” one recruiter for tech companies told Susan Dominus for The New York Times Magazine. Tech can do only so much about climbing gas and electricity bills. My colleague Brian X. Chen writes about the benefits and limits of energy-saving technologies like the Nest internet-connected thermostat. Brian learned that no gadget can save you from a poorly insulated home. Evidence Why does no one have legs in the metaverse? CNN explains. Claim This kitty towers over an elaborate model train set. (The video is from last year, but it always cheers me up.) We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. Evidence If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. You can also read past On Tech columns. Concluding Statement

nytimes\metaverse-gaming-definition.txt

Using custom data configuration default-6c8c4bcd76bba24e

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-6c8c4bcd76bba24e\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-6c8c4bcd76bba24e\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

The term “metaverse” is everywhere. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7112748622894287}
On Tuesday, Microsoft cited the so-called metaverse as a reason for acquiring the game developer Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, saying the deal would provide “building blocks for the metaverse.” Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has also bet on the metaverse and renamed his social networking company Meta. Google has worked on metaverse-related technology for years. And Apple has its own related devices in the works. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9923776388168335}
But what does the metaverse really mean, and does it even exist? Here’s what you need to know. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8782995939254761}
The metaverse is the convergence of two ideas that have been around for many years: virtual reality and a digital second life. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5103964805603027}
For decades, technologists have dreamed of an era when our virtual lives play as important a role as our physical realities. In theory, we would spend lots of time interacting with our friends and colleagues in virtual space. As a result, we would spend money there, too, on outfits and objects for our digital avatars. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.64349764585495}
In what techies like Mr. Zuckerberg call the metaverse, virtual reality serves as a computing platform for living a second life online. In virtual reality, you wear a headset that immerses you in a 3-D environment. You carry motion-sensing controllers to interact with virtual objects and use a microphone to communicate with others. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8047229051589966}
Matthew Ball, a venture capitalist who has written extensively about the topic, said the metaverse represented the fourth wave to computers, following mainframe computing, personal computing and mobile computing. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.49681535363197327}
“It’s moving into what people call ambient computing,” he said about the metaverse. “It’s about being within the computer rather than accessing the computer. It’s about being always online rather than always having access to an online world.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4980068802833557}
To put it simply, yes. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.5122665166854858}
To some extent, there is already a metaverse in games. But — and it’s an important but — it’s rudimentary. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.45675674080848694}
Some social elements of the metaverse can already be found in video games. Consider Fortnite, an online shooter game played on computers, game consoles and mobile devices. The average Fortnite player spends hundreds of hours in the game with a personal avatar, fighting with and interacting with the avatars of other players. Players also accrue virtual currency that unlocks outfits and other goodies to customize their avatars. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9821056127548218}
A precursor to the metaverse could also be found in Second Life, an online social platform developed by Linden Lab nearly two decades ago, where people created digital representations of themselves to socialize with others. In the virtual space, users could shop and build property to enrich their virtual lives. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7873145937919617}
Virtual reality is also somewhat advanced in video games. In 2016, Sony released the $400 PlayStation VR, a virtual reality headset that plugged into its PlayStation 4 console to play virtual reality games. This month, Sony said a second-generation headset was coming for the PlayStation 5, though it did not share a release date. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9547829031944275}
But those were just steppingstones toward the complete metaverse, which is still taking shape. Technologists say that thanks to a number of things — fast internet connections, powerful virtual reality headsets and a large audience of gamers — it is now more possible to live in a richly animated, lifelike 3-D simulation. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8885493874549866}
“It’s only in the last few years that a critical mass of working pieces has come together,” Mr. Ball said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4689646363258362}
Truth be told, not too much. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6844179630279541}
Activision Blizzard is well known for making online games that have a metaverse component, where players spent hundreds of hours forming communities within the games. In its role-playing game World of Warcraft, released in 2004, gamers worked together online to complete quests in an effort to make their digital avatars stronger by collecting items like weapons and armors. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.960966944694519}
But the company has not dabbled in virtual reality. It has primarily made games for personal computers and game consoles but has yet to release a virtual reality game. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8628392815589905}
So far, Microsoft’s work on the metaverse has been nascent. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7084871530532837}
For several years, the software giant has developed the HoloLens, a $3,500 headset that shows digital holograms, with a focus on applications for businesses and government agencies. The device is related to augmented reality, which some technologists consider to be part of the future metaverse. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4709491729736328}
Microsoft is also the developer of the Xbox, the second most popular game console after the Sony PlayStation. But unlike the PlayStation, the Xbox has been conspicuously absent from the virtual reality gaming space.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.850113570690155}

The term “metaverse” is everywhere. Claim On Tuesday, Microsoft cited the so-called metaverse as a reason for acquiring the game developer Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, saying the deal would provide “building blocks for the metaverse.” Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has also bet on the metaverse and renamed his social networking company Meta. Google has worked on metaverse-related technology for years. And Apple has its own related devices in the works. Evidence But what does the metaverse really mean, and does it even exist? Here’s what you need to know. Rebuttal The metaverse is the convergence of two ideas that have been around for many years: virtual reality and a digital second life. Claim For decades, technologists have dreamed of an era when our virtual lives play as important a role as our physical realities. In theory, we would spend lots of time interacting with our friends and colleagues in virtual space. As a result, we would spend money there, too, on outfits and objects for our digital avatars. Lead In what techies like Mr. Zuckerberg call the metaverse, virtual reality serves as a computing platform for living a second life online. In virtual reality, you wear a headset that immerses you in a 3-D environment. You carry motion-sensing controllers to interact with virtual objects and use a microphone to communicate with others. Matthew Ball, a venture capitalist who has written extensively about the topic, said the metaverse represented the fourth wave to computers, following mainframe computing, personal computing and mobile computing. “It’s moving into what people call ambient computing,” he said about the metaverse. “It’s about being within the computer rather than accessing the computer. It’s about being always online rather than always having access to an online world.” Evidence To put it simply, yes. Rebuttal To some extent, there is already a metaverse in games. But — and it’s an important but — it’s rudimentary. Claim Some social elements of the metaverse can already be found in video games. Consider Fortnite, an online shooter game played on computers, game consoles and mobile devices. The average Fortnite player spends hundreds of hours in the game with a personal avatar, fighting with and interacting with the avatars of other players. Players also accrue virtual currency that unlocks outfits and other goodies to customize their avatars. A precursor to the metaverse could also be found in Second Life, an online social platform developed by Linden Lab nearly two decades ago, where people created digital representations of themselves to socialize with others. In the virtual space, users could shop and build property to enrich their virtual lives. Virtual reality is also somewhat advanced in video games. In 2016, Sony released the $400 PlayStation VR, a virtual reality headset that plugged into its PlayStation 4 console to play virtual reality games. This month, Sony said a second-generation headset was coming for the PlayStation 5, though it did not share a release date. Evidence But those were just steppingstones toward the complete metaverse, which is still taking shape. Technologists say that thanks to a number of things — fast internet connections, powerful virtual reality headsets and a large audience of gamers — it is now more possible to live in a richly animated, lifelike 3-D simulation. Rebuttal “It’s only in the last few years that a critical mass of working pieces has come together,” Mr. Ball said. Truth be told, not too much. Claim Activision Blizzard is well known for making online games that have a metaverse component, where players spent hundreds of hours forming communities within the games. In its role-playing game World of Warcraft, released in 2004, gamers worked together online to complete quests in an effort to make their digital avatars stronger by collecting items like weapons and armors. Evidence But the company has not dabbled in virtual reality. It has primarily made games for personal computers and game consoles but has yet to release a virtual reality game. Rebuttal So far, Microsoft’s work on the metaverse has been nascent. Claim For several years, the software giant has developed the HoloLens, a $3,500 headset that shows digital holograms, with a focus on applications for businesses and government agencies. The device is related to augmented reality, which some technologists consider to be part of the future metaverse. Microsoft is also the developer of the Xbox, the second most popular game console after the Sony PlayStation. But unlike the PlayStation, the Xbox has been conspicuously absent from the virtual reality gaming space. Evidence

nytimes\metaverse-politics-disinformation-society.txt

Using custom data configuration default-af442e383791019f
Reusing dataset text (C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-af442e383791019f\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4)

Loading cached processed dataset at C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-af442e383791019f\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4\cache-e4ae27236b288068.arrow

The metaverse is coming. It was once a science-fiction fantasy, most notably in Neal Stephenson’s novel “Snow Crash,” of an all-encompassing virtual universe that would exist alongside the physical one. But technological advances have brought this transformation of human society close enough to reality to demand that we consider its consequences. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.9138175845146179}
In the metaverse, a user might curate a digital avatar, like a character in a video game. Through the eyes of their avatar, they would experience a digital reality as active and engaging as the physical one. Some futurists believe that soon we might attend doctor’s appointments or class there. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4578322768211365}
But while the metaverse could revolutionize work and play, it is essential to remain wary of the dangers that will emerge if it subsumes daily life. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8579508066177368}
Virtual environments will supercharge disinformation campaigns, espionage and surveillance. Struggles for control of the metaverse’s physical infrastructure could very well aggravate global conflicts. And the supranational nature of the metaverse — where real-world borders become far less relevant — could revolutionize the way that individuals perceive and interact with nation-states. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7309265732765198}
A failure to anticipate these possibilities may put the global world order at risk of being replaced by a virtual, and perhaps less virtuous, one. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.48474985361099243}
Today, glimpses of the metaverse are everywhere. Virtual concerts attract record audiences; high-end designers sell virtual fashion; and gaming has become a livelihood for people around the world. Many of the closest corollaries to a full-fledged metaverse are immersive games like Fortnite, Minecraft and Roblox, where players can socialize, shop and attend events in a virtual world. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.6995190382003784}
There’s already evidence that online multiplayer games can enable the spread of disinformation and conspiracy theories. Players can use in-game communication tools to disseminate rumors or “fake news,” targeting others in difficult-to-track ways. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6133278608322144}
The metaverse could allow motivated regimes or extremist groups to go a step farther. Immersive layers of text, voice and visuals in virtual environments would provide new, convincing ways to broadcast misleading or extremist content. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6839314699172974}
In environments where individuals can be represented by pseudonymous avatars, knowing whom to trust with sensitive information will become even more difficult. This could pave the way for a new era of espionage. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5496785640716553}
Digital espionage has already been used by dozens of countries to gain access to commercial intellectual property, proprietary military technology and personal and financial information. A metaverse that contains nearly all aspects of life — work, relationships, assets, identity — could be susceptible to breaches or manipulation from across the globe. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6862616539001465}
Countries and corporations alike will likely also be able to use the metaverse to engage in surveillance with greater sophistication. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8166552186012268}
States have already used facial recognition technology to monitor individuals’ behavior. Companies have used it for device-unlocking or real-time animation. Integration with the metaverse could make it — and the privacy issues it presents — even more ubiquitous. If exploited, that technology could easily be used to surveil any participant around the world. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9590646028518677}
Even the metaverse’s physical infrastructure will likely present new vulnerabilities. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.9636619687080383}
A constellation of technologies, including hardware, computer networks and payment tools, will support the metaverse’s functionality. The countries that maintain control over those technologies will have significant international leverage, just as countries that command things like transport routes or oil supplies do today. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8707076907157898}
China could effectively control the metaverse’s backbone in many corners of the world, thanks to its Digital Silk Road initiative, which finances some countries’ telecommunications systems. Taiwan, which dominates the semiconductor industry that supports computing needs, will likely become even more of a linchpin on the global stage. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8933605551719666}
This kind of physical infrastructure will, in turn, be vulnerable to hacking and supply chain interruptions. If people own property, earn a living, and maintain communities in the metaverse, then hardware shortages or service outages could jeopardize livelihoods or undermine social stability. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.863372266292572}
Despite these threats, the metaverse also has the potential to change global affairs for the better. International diplomacy may just as easily be conducted in virtual embassies. Smaller, less powerful nations may find themselves on a more level playing field, better able to stay in the mix in global affairs or perhaps, to forge unlikely alliances. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.626261830329895}
Virtual environments have also shown promise for activists resisting digital authoritarianism. On Minecraft, Reporters Without Borders has sponsored an Uncensored Library where users could see content by dissident writers that had been censored in countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia and Vietnam. It’s possible that the metaverse may bring new promise for freedom and transparency across borders. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9809460043907166}
But the metaverse’s consequences may be even more radical. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8597285747528076}
If it becomes as all-encompassing as some predict, the metaverse may foster virtual communities, networks and economies that transcend borders and national identities. Individuals might one day identify primarily with metaverse-based decentralized autonomous organizations with their own quasi-foreign policies. Such a transition could mandate the reconceptualization of geopolitical affairs from the ground up. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8217823505401611}
The metaverse may have been born in science fiction, but it’s up to us to write a future grounded in cleareyed reality. {'label': 'Position', 'score': 0.4609670341014862}

The metaverse is coming. It was once a science-fiction fantasy, most notably in Neal Stephenson’s novel “Snow Crash,” of an all-encompassing virtual universe that would exist alongside the physical one. But technological advances have brought this transformation of human society close enough to reality to demand that we consider its consequences. Lead In the metaverse, a user might curate a digital avatar, like a character in a video game. Through the eyes of their avatar, they would experience a digital reality as active and engaging as the physical one. Some futurists believe that soon we might attend doctor’s appointments or class there. Evidence But while the metaverse could revolutionize work and play, it is essential to remain wary of the dangers that will emerge if it subsumes daily life. Rebuttal Virtual environments will supercharge disinformation campaigns, espionage and surveillance. Struggles for control of the metaverse’s physical infrastructure could very well aggravate global conflicts. And the supranational nature of the metaverse — where real-world borders become far less relevant — could revolutionize the way that individuals perceive and interact with nation-states. Evidence A failure to anticipate these possibilities may put the global world order at risk of being replaced by a virtual, and perhaps less virtuous, one. Claim Today, glimpses of the metaverse are everywhere. Virtual concerts attract record audiences; high-end designers sell virtual fashion; and gaming has become a livelihood for people around the world. Many of the closest corollaries to a full-fledged metaverse are immersive games like Fortnite, Minecraft and Roblox, where players can socialize, shop and attend events in a virtual world. Lead There’s already evidence that online multiplayer games can enable the spread of disinformation and conspiracy theories. Players can use in-game communication tools to disseminate rumors or “fake news,” targeting others in difficult-to-track ways. The metaverse could allow motivated regimes or extremist groups to go a step farther. Immersive layers of text, voice and visuals in virtual environments would provide new, convincing ways to broadcast misleading or extremist content. Evidence In environments where individuals can be represented by pseudonymous avatars, knowing whom to trust with sensitive information will become even more difficult. This could pave the way for a new era of espionage. Claim Digital espionage has already been used by dozens of countries to gain access to commercial intellectual property, proprietary military technology and personal and financial information. A metaverse that contains nearly all aspects of life — work, relationships, assets, identity — could be susceptible to breaches or manipulation from across the globe. Evidence Countries and corporations alike will likely also be able to use the metaverse to engage in surveillance with greater sophistication. Claim States have already used facial recognition technology to monitor individuals’ behavior. Companies have used it for device-unlocking or real-time animation. Integration with the metaverse could make it — and the privacy issues it presents — even more ubiquitous. If exploited, that technology could easily be used to surveil any participant around the world. Evidence Even the metaverse’s physical infrastructure will likely present new vulnerabilities. Claim A constellation of technologies, including hardware, computer networks and payment tools, will support the metaverse’s functionality. The countries that maintain control over those technologies will have significant international leverage, just as countries that command things like transport routes or oil supplies do today. China could effectively control the metaverse’s backbone in many corners of the world, thanks to its Digital Silk Road initiative, which finances some countries’ telecommunications systems. Taiwan, which dominates the semiconductor industry that supports computing needs, will likely become even more of a linchpin on the global stage. This kind of physical infrastructure will, in turn, be vulnerable to hacking and supply chain interruptions. If people own property, earn a living, and maintain communities in the metaverse, then hardware shortages or service outages could jeopardize livelihoods or undermine social stability. Evidence Despite these threats, the metaverse also has the potential to change global affairs for the better. International diplomacy may just as easily be conducted in virtual embassies. Smaller, less powerful nations may find themselves on a more level playing field, better able to stay in the mix in global affairs or perhaps, to forge unlikely alliances. Rebuttal Virtual environments have also shown promise for activists resisting digital authoritarianism. On Minecraft, Reporters Without Borders has sponsored an Uncensored Library where users could see content by dissident writers that had been censored in countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia and Vietnam. It’s possible that the metaverse may bring new promise for freedom and transparency across borders. Evidence But the metaverse’s consequences may be even more radical. Rebuttal If it becomes as all-encompassing as some predict, the metaverse may foster virtual communities, networks and economies that transcend borders and national identities. Individuals might one day identify primarily with metaverse-based decentralized autonomous organizations with their own quasi-foreign policies. Such a transition could mandate the reconceptualization of geopolitical affairs from the ground up. Evidence The metaverse may have been born in science fiction, but it’s up to us to write a future grounded in cleareyed reality. Position

nytimes\microsoft-activision-metaverse.txt

Using custom data configuration default-aa026f4fd1d65feb

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-aa026f4fd1d65feb\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-aa026f4fd1d65feb\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. Here is a collection of past columns. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.7628713846206665}
Microsoft is making a big bet on video games, and even if you’re like me and don’t really play them, it’s worth taking notice. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5387420058250427}
Microsoft said on Tuesday that it would buy Activision Blizzard, which makes video games including Candy Crush and Call of Duty. Microsoft will pay close to $70 billion for the game maker, a lot of money even for such a rich company. Activision slots into Microsoft’s other video game businesses, including the Xbox game console and video games like Halo and Minecraft. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9923815131187439}
But Microsoft’s acquisition also shows that video games are not merely entertainment anymore. They have become weapons that today’s technology titans wield to try to shape our future in their preferred direction. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8405957818031311}
I’m talking about the “metaverse,” the terrible shorthand that technologists have adopted for a broad vision of a future internet that will further blur the lines between online life and real life, and between people and computers. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.46682944893836975}
The metaverse is hard to define. (We could just call it the next phase of the internet, but I guess that’s too boring.) Tech companies now believe that video games are a gateway to moving faster toward whatever that more immersive internet future will be, and they are dictating what it will look like, and who the winners and losers will be. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6053386330604553}
Wanting to shape the future of the internet is one reason Facebook renamed itself Meta and has focused so much attention on its Oculus virtual reality goggles and video-game-like virtual business meetings. It’s also a reason Apple is designing face computers, and why Amazon and Google have used their cloud-computing services to make it easier for people to stream sophisticated video games over the internet. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9685075283050537}
Video games for a long time have been a glimpse at what’s possible. Even before we camped out on Facebook and YouTube, game designers created worlds that didn’t exist but felt real. Video games were among the first consumer products that proved that people would pay for virtual things — for example, weapons, clothing or tractors in FarmVille. Gamers are already living in the metaverse, and tech companies essentially want to bring that sense of imagination to every aspect of life online, including friendships, shopping and live theater. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8989840149879456}
I don’t know that any of these Big Tech companies know exactly what they want a more immersive internet to look like. I also don’t know that we want Mark Zuckerberg or Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, to dictate the future of virtual human interactions. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.595425009727478}
But money sloshing around in video games and other immersive technologies shows that the titans of tech are both excited about the future and fearful that they’ll miss out on it. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8660948276519775}
A side note: There’s another, less sexy explanation for Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision. This is what happens when crisis meets opportunity meets money that makes no sense. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.6626018285751343}
Activision might not have been sold without the claims of workplace sexual misconduct and other mistreatment of employees that have roiled the company in the past year. A significant number of its workers, plus regulators and some of the company’s investors, have said that Activision let problems fester for far too long. Those claims have hit its stock price, making it a less expensive purchase for Microsoft than it would have been a year ago. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9650002121925354}
As for money not making any sense — Microsoft and most other tech giants have oodles of cash and stock prices in the stratosphere, and they can borrow money practically for free. That makes even eye-popping business acquisitions like Activision less nutty than they might have seemed a couple of years ago. (Microsoft’s stock price did fall a bit Tuesday morning, a sign that investors are questioning the wisdom of the purchase or the high price.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9905942678451538}
Even absent imaginations of the metaverse, video games are a cultural force today and a huge business. Video games generate far more revenue than the global movie industry, and games are by far the most popular and lucrative smartphone apps in the world. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.43955618143081665}
Microsoft’s purchase of Activision is a splurge on the now, and on the future. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6218274235725403}
Amazon wants more electric delivery vans. AND IT WANTS THEM NOW. My colleagues Karen Weise and Neal Boudette explain why the mostly young electric vehicle manufacturers cannot meet Amazon’s voracious needs. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8423090577125549}
The local government app that is challenging Uber: The tech news publication Rest of World writes that more Rio de Janeiro residents are skipping Uber rides for traditional taxis. The local government has invested in developing a taxi dispatch app, and the authorities have kept cab prices mostly the same while Uber fares have gone up because of high fuel prices and a shortage of drivers. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.99379563331604}
“Squid Game” was not an accident. Bloomberg News explores Netflix’s strategy to air more South Korean programming including last year’s hit “Squid Game” series. Netflix is picking up entertainment ideas that were too edgy for Korea’s TV industry, and it’s winning fans throughout the world. (A subscription may be required.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9675747752189636}
Say hello to these cuddling owls. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.35472118854522705}
We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.39380958676338196}
If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. You can also read past On Tech columns. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.4619752764701843}

This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. Here is a collection of past columns. Lead Microsoft is making a big bet on video games, and even if you’re like me and don’t really play them, it’s worth taking notice. Claim Microsoft said on Tuesday that it would buy Activision Blizzard, which makes video games including Candy Crush and Call of Duty. Microsoft will pay close to $70 billion for the game maker, a lot of money even for such a rich company. Activision slots into Microsoft’s other video game businesses, including the Xbox game console and video games like Halo and Minecraft. Evidence But Microsoft’s acquisition also shows that video games are not merely entertainment anymore. They have become weapons that today’s technology titans wield to try to shape our future in their preferred direction. Rebuttal I’m talking about the “metaverse,” the terrible shorthand that technologists have adopted for a broad vision of a future internet that will further blur the lines between online life and real life, and between people and computers. Lead The metaverse is hard to define. (We could just call it the next phase of the internet, but I guess that’s too boring.) Tech companies now believe that video games are a gateway to moving faster toward whatever that more immersive internet future will be, and they are dictating what it will look like, and who the winners and losers will be. Wanting to shape the future of the internet is one reason Facebook renamed itself Meta and has focused so much attention on its Oculus virtual reality goggles and video-game-like virtual business meetings. It’s also a reason Apple is designing face computers, and why Amazon and Google have used their cloud-computing services to make it easier for people to stream sophisticated video games over the internet. Video games for a long time have been a glimpse at what’s possible. Even before we camped out on Facebook and YouTube, game designers created worlds that didn’t exist but felt real. Video games were among the first consumer products that proved that people would pay for virtual things — for example, weapons, clothing or tractors in FarmVille. Gamers are already living in the metaverse, and tech companies essentially want to bring that sense of imagination to every aspect of life online, including friendships, shopping and live theater. I don’t know that any of these Big Tech companies know exactly what they want a more immersive internet to look like. I also don’t know that we want Mark Zuckerberg or Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, to dictate the future of virtual human interactions. Evidence But money sloshing around in video games and other immersive technologies shows that the titans of tech are both excited about the future and fearful that they’ll miss out on it. Rebuttal A side note: There’s another, less sexy explanation for Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision. This is what happens when crisis meets opportunity meets money that makes no sense. Counterclaim Activision might not have been sold without the claims of workplace sexual misconduct and other mistreatment of employees that have roiled the company in the past year. A significant number of its workers, plus regulators and some of the company’s investors, have said that Activision let problems fester for far too long. Those claims have hit its stock price, making it a less expensive purchase for Microsoft than it would have been a year ago. As for money not making any sense — Microsoft and most other tech giants have oodles of cash and stock prices in the stratosphere, and they can borrow money practically for free. That makes even eye-popping business acquisitions like Activision less nutty than they might have seemed a couple of years ago. (Microsoft’s stock price did fall a bit Tuesday morning, a sign that investors are questioning the wisdom of the purchase or the high price.) Even absent imaginations of the metaverse, video games are a cultural force today and a huge business. Video games generate far more revenue than the global movie industry, and games are by far the most popular and lucrative smartphone apps in the world. Evidence Microsoft’s purchase of Activision is a splurge on the now, and on the future. Claim Amazon wants more electric delivery vans. AND IT WANTS THEM NOW. My colleagues Karen Weise and Neal Boudette explain why the mostly young electric vehicle manufacturers cannot meet Amazon’s voracious needs. The local government app that is challenging Uber: The tech news publication Rest of World writes that more Rio de Janeiro residents are skipping Uber rides for traditional taxis. The local government has invested in developing a taxi dispatch app, and the authorities have kept cab prices mostly the same while Uber fares have gone up because of high fuel prices and a shortage of drivers. “Squid Game” was not an accident. Bloomberg News explores Netflix’s strategy to air more South Korean programming including last year’s hit “Squid Game” series. Netflix is picking up entertainment ideas that were too edgy for Korea’s TV industry, and it’s winning fans throughout the world. (A subscription may be required.) Evidence Say hello to these cuddling owls. Claim We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. Evidence If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. You can also read past On Tech columns. Concluding Statement

nytimes\modern-love-i-tried-so-hard-to-be-good.txt

Using custom data configuration default-71b2dc8352669aa3

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-71b2dc8352669aa3\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-71b2dc8352669aa3\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

My husband and I married in a Presbyterian church in Watkins Glen, N.Y., on the banks of Seneca Lake. It was June 2006, three months before he started seminary and five-and-a-half years after I had quit the sex industry. I considered our wedding the marriage of the former stripper and the future minister. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7654452323913574}
After the wedding, I followed the contours of his career with the flexibility and accord of a synchronized swimmer. I left my job at a Vermont newspaper and moved to Boston, where he had enrolled in theological school. While he studied, I read books that told me how to read The Book, how to live The Book. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9504602551460266}
To cross the Jordan, I read, we must die, symbolically. We must give ourselves up, let go and be embodied by Christ. I let go of all my friends, gave up my Blues music (too sexy) and Celtic music (too many mentions of whiskey) and my tight iridescent clothes. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7587457299232483}
My sex toys and handcuffs dropped straight into the garbage. The furniture I had owned was expunged from our lives, the wood buckling on the back porch before we tossed each piece into the trash. Purged of my former life, I started over, guided by this 22-year-old man, seven years younger than I, who was making Jesus his business. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9312018752098083}
He thought he was saving me, and I thought I needed to be saved. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5117859840393066}
In my experience, sex work and Christianity were not incongruous. I only danced for a few months, in San Francisco and New York, to make my rent payments between college and my job as a web developer, but the shame and guilt I felt about stripping pivoted neatly to my role as a good Christian wife. In both cases, I relied on the perceptions of others to define my value. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9363307952880859}
Our first baby was born in the winter, and the next summer we lived at a Baptist summer camp where my husband was employed as the waterfront director. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6072081327438354}
Each day I traversed the camp with the baby in a jogging stroller, juddering down the rocky path to the lake where my husband stood on a dock all day watching the water. After dinner he jumped inside an octagonal pen and played gaga ball with 11-year-old boys while I retreated to our room to nurse the baby because I was not allowed to breastfeed in front of campers. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8901324272155762}
In the evenings, staff gave testimonies of their Christian journeys and led singalongs, campfires and talent shows. By the time my husband came to bed, the baby and I were asleep. When we woke at 7 a.m., he was gone. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9168392419815063}
I read the Bible that summer, Genesis to Revelation. I memorized scriptures. One night I came to the chapel where my husband was preaching to campers and heard him lecture from Leviticus Chapter 11. It is OK, he said, to eat crickets and grasshoppers, but not flies. Locusts are an acceptable snack, but shrimp are forbidden. If you pick up a dead pig, you must wash your clothes. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8218637704849243}
The campers were rapt, and I thought, “He is brilliant, the way he relates the Bible to children.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3993588387966156}
I didn’t tell anyone I was terrified the Christian community would reject me if they knew I used to be a stripper. My husband told me his career depended on our collective reputation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8194736242294312}
The camp director’s wife ate meals at our table. She was stout with a round face and creases under her eyes, and she was accessible, meaning she acknowledged that I existed and greeted me in a grumpy but cheerful way. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8403805494308472}
“If I give a testimony,” I asked her, “how much of my story am I supposed to share?” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5503295063972473}
My testimony, I had gathered, was the story of my Christian journey, with answers to these questions: When was I baptized? When did I give my life to Christ? When did I accept Jesus as my Lord and savior? {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.6077690720558167}
I was baptized as a baby and again with my husband, full immersion, fully clothed, a month after our daughter was born. I had given my life to Christ at the Mission Church in Somerville, Mass., two years earlier. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8509998917579651}
Did the testimony also include the question: When did you conclude there must be a light to lead us out of this dense darkness? When did you feel so wrong you decided to turn around, to repent? Was it in the basement of the Paradise Club, when a man yanked you down and groped you? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7916076183319092}
The camp director’s wife rolled her eyes and said, “Well, that’s up to you to decide.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.2856290638446808}
My full testimony, I thought, might have a shock value similar to the story a man from the kitchen staff told to the new campers about putting a gun to his head and hearing a voice say, “I love you.” I wondered what kind of shocks they were willing to accept. Did they believe strippers could be saved? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9165336489677429}
Some jobs are water, and some are wine. Some evaporate without a trace, and some leave a stain. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8632805943489075}
The Bible studies were segregated by gender, so I went to the women’s Bible study and told them that I was lonely, that I needed a mentor or someone I could talk to about my spiritual path. They listened with wide eyes, then closed them and prayed that I would find someone. By “someone,” they meant someone else. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9800189137458801}
In the lonely vertigo, I found Jesus. Every morning, I sneaked into the back of the log chapel, raised my hand in the air and sang love songs to Jesus. I stood in the last pew, separated from the campers, bouncing my baby if she was awake or, if she was asleep in the reclined stroller, praying that the praise would not wake her. Along with the girls and boys in tie-dyed T-shirts and shaggy hair, I sang quietly over an electronic accompaniment, “Open the eyes of my heart, Lord.” {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.8537774085998535}
It worked. The eyes of my heart opened, and they wept. My heart ached, and all of it — the isolation, the anonymity, the worry, the pain of seeing but never being seen as I pushed the stroller from road to forest to road, swatting horse flies that dived at my head, even the shock that this life had settled over me like a blanket and smothered my spark — all of it I attributed to Jesus. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8357546925544739}
I was sad because I had sinned. I was lonely because I was cut off from God. Every morning I stood at the back of the chapel and sang, “Here I am to worship,” one hand reaching for the stained glass. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.7373478412628174}
If I could humble myself enough to take Jesus into my heart, to die to this world and be reborn as a pure, sinless ray of light, the resurrected me would be a gossamer membrane illuminated like a lantern whose radiance is uneclipsed by an immolated moth carcass. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4812068045139313}
If I could submit to Jesus, maybe I could submit to my husband, like the Bible recommends. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6439586877822876}
I tried so hard to be good. Quieting the babies at night so he could sleep soundly before his exams. Smiling politely when a man would say, “Behind every great man is a great woman,” instead of asking why they stand right in front of us. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7991202473640442}
I felt invisible. From the hyper exposure of bare skin on a spot-lit stage, I had repented and repackaged myself as a pastor’s wife. The pendulum had swung from one extreme to another, and neither felt authentic. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8491674661636353}
I don’t know how the Christian community at the camp would have reacted to my brief stint as a stripper because I never gave a testimony. My fear of them pre-empted their judgment of me. I never allowed them the opportunity to accept me. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.883115828037262}
Stripping is not inherently shameful; by thinking in polarities of good and bad, I ascribed it with shame. In both extremes, I felt incomplete, preferring to categorize my behavior as all bad or all good. I looked to my husband to be my “other half.” When I felt naughty, he seemed holy. When I thought of myself as virtuous, I only saw his faults. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9283772706985474}
The marriage lasted 15 years. As a divorced mother, I have relaxed into my body and learned to see through my own eyes — to look, not to look like; to be, not to pose. I no longer adjust myself according to my reflection in others’ eyes. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8583499789237976}
My body has changed since I danced in clubs more than two decades ago. Birthing four children has stretched my belly from a six-pack to a boule of unbaked bread. It is a mother’s body. It is my body, to embrace and be embraced with love. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7882555723190308}
We are pleased to announce the start of the sixth Modern Love College Essay Contest. What has love been like for you during these difficult times? We want to know. Go to nytimes.com/essaycontest for details. Deadline is March 27th. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.8562182188034058}

My husband and I married in a Presbyterian church in Watkins Glen, N.Y., on the banks of Seneca Lake. It was June 2006, three months before he started seminary and five-and-a-half years after I had quit the sex industry. I considered our wedding the marriage of the former stripper and the future minister. After the wedding, I followed the contours of his career with the flexibility and accord of a synchronized swimmer. I left my job at a Vermont newspaper and moved to Boston, where he had enrolled in theological school. While he studied, I read books that told me how to read The Book, how to live The Book. To cross the Jordan, I read, we must die, symbolically. We must give ourselves up, let go and be embodied by Christ. I let go of all my friends, gave up my Blues music (too sexy) and Celtic music (too many mentions of whiskey) and my tight iridescent clothes. My sex toys and handcuffs dropped straight into the garbage. The furniture I had owned was expunged from our lives, the wood buckling on the back porch before we tossed each piece into the trash. Purged of my former life, I started over, guided by this 22-year-old man, seven years younger than I, who was making Jesus his business. Evidence He thought he was saving me, and I thought I needed to be saved. Claim In my experience, sex work and Christianity were not incongruous. I only danced for a few months, in San Francisco and New York, to make my rent payments between college and my job as a web developer, but the shame and guilt I felt about stripping pivoted neatly to my role as a good Christian wife. In both cases, I relied on the perceptions of others to define my value. Our first baby was born in the winter, and the next summer we lived at a Baptist summer camp where my husband was employed as the waterfront director. Each day I traversed the camp with the baby in a jogging stroller, juddering down the rocky path to the lake where my husband stood on a dock all day watching the water. After dinner he jumped inside an octagonal pen and played gaga ball with 11-year-old boys while I retreated to our room to nurse the baby because I was not allowed to breastfeed in front of campers. In the evenings, staff gave testimonies of their Christian journeys and led singalongs, campfires and talent shows. By the time my husband came to bed, the baby and I were asleep. When we woke at 7 a.m., he was gone. I read the Bible that summer, Genesis to Revelation. I memorized scriptures. One night I came to the chapel where my husband was preaching to campers and heard him lecture from Leviticus Chapter 11. It is OK, he said, to eat crickets and grasshoppers, but not flies. Locusts are an acceptable snack, but shrimp are forbidden. If you pick up a dead pig, you must wash your clothes. Evidence The campers were rapt, and I thought, “He is brilliant, the way he relates the Bible to children.” Claim I didn’t tell anyone I was terrified the Christian community would reject me if they knew I used to be a stripper. My husband told me his career depended on our collective reputation. The camp director’s wife ate meals at our table. She was stout with a round face and creases under her eyes, and she was accessible, meaning she acknowledged that I existed and greeted me in a grumpy but cheerful way. Evidence “If I give a testimony,” I asked her, “how much of my story am I supposed to share?” Claim My testimony, I had gathered, was the story of my Christian journey, with answers to these questions: When was I baptized? When did I give my life to Christ? When did I accept Jesus as my Lord and savior? Lead I was baptized as a baby and again with my husband, full immersion, fully clothed, a month after our daughter was born. I had given my life to Christ at the Mission Church in Somerville, Mass., two years earlier. Did the testimony also include the question: When did you conclude there must be a light to lead us out of this dense darkness? When did you feel so wrong you decided to turn around, to repent? Was it in the basement of the Paradise Club, when a man yanked you down and groped you? The camp director’s wife rolled her eyes and said, “Well, that’s up to you to decide.” My full testimony, I thought, might have a shock value similar to the story a man from the kitchen staff told to the new campers about putting a gun to his head and hearing a voice say, “I love you.” I wondered what kind of shocks they were willing to accept. Did they believe strippers could be saved? Some jobs are water, and some are wine. Some evaporate without a trace, and some leave a stain. The Bible studies were segregated by gender, so I went to the women’s Bible study and told them that I was lonely, that I needed a mentor or someone I could talk to about my spiritual path. They listened with wide eyes, then closed them and prayed that I would find someone. By “someone,” they meant someone else. Evidence In the lonely vertigo, I found Jesus. Every morning, I sneaked into the back of the log chapel, raised my hand in the air and sang love songs to Jesus. I stood in the last pew, separated from the campers, bouncing my baby if she was awake or, if she was asleep in the reclined stroller, praying that the praise would not wake her. Along with the girls and boys in tie-dyed T-shirts and shaggy hair, I sang quietly over an electronic accompaniment, “Open the eyes of my heart, Lord.” Lead It worked. The eyes of my heart opened, and they wept. My heart ached, and all of it — the isolation, the anonymity, the worry, the pain of seeing but never being seen as I pushed the stroller from road to forest to road, swatting horse flies that dived at my head, even the shock that this life had settled over me like a blanket and smothered my spark — all of it I attributed to Jesus. Evidence I was sad because I had sinned. I was lonely because I was cut off from God. Every morning I stood at the back of the chapel and sang, “Here I am to worship,” one hand reaching for the stained glass. Lead If I could humble myself enough to take Jesus into my heart, to die to this world and be reborn as a pure, sinless ray of light, the resurrected me would be a gossamer membrane illuminated like a lantern whose radiance is uneclipsed by an immolated moth carcass. Evidence If I could submit to Jesus, maybe I could submit to my husband, like the Bible recommends. Claim I tried so hard to be good. Quieting the babies at night so he could sleep soundly before his exams. Smiling politely when a man would say, “Behind every great man is a great woman,” instead of asking why they stand right in front of us. I felt invisible. From the hyper exposure of bare skin on a spot-lit stage, I had repented and repackaged myself as a pastor’s wife. The pendulum had swung from one extreme to another, and neither felt authentic. I don’t know how the Christian community at the camp would have reacted to my brief stint as a stripper because I never gave a testimony. My fear of them pre-empted their judgment of me. I never allowed them the opportunity to accept me. Stripping is not inherently shameful; by thinking in polarities of good and bad, I ascribed it with shame. In both extremes, I felt incomplete, preferring to categorize my behavior as all bad or all good. I looked to my husband to be my “other half.” When I felt naughty, he seemed holy. When I thought of myself as virtuous, I only saw his faults. The marriage lasted 15 years. As a divorced mother, I have relaxed into my body and learned to see through my own eyes — to look, not to look like; to be, not to pose. I no longer adjust myself according to my reflection in others’ eyes. My body has changed since I danced in clubs more than two decades ago. Birthing four children has stretched my belly from a six-pack to a boule of unbaked bread. It is a mother’s body. It is my body, to embrace and be embraced with love. Evidence We are pleased to announce the start of the sixth Modern Love College Essay Contest. What has love been like for you during these difficult times? We want to know. Go to nytimes.com/essaycontest for details. Deadline is March 27th. Lead

nytimes\modern-love-podcast-ham-sandwich.txt

Using custom data configuration default-d3a0f74000f214bc

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-d3a0f74000f214bc\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-d3a0f74000f214bc\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Before Andrew Limbong went off to college, his mother cautioned him about the dire consequences he would face if he hugged a girl. Andrew grew up in a strict Christian household, and his parents are Indonesian immigrants, so they never spoke about sex at home. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9050554633140564}
When Andrew was 20, he met his first girlfriend, Sam. As they started dating, he felt his cultural and parental influences putting “pressure on my blood vessels, not allowing the blood to go where I oh so desperately wanted it to,” he wrote in his Modern Love essay in 2011. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8785298466682434}
According to Andrew’s Muslim American friend, his fears were the result of the “ham sandwich” effect: the feeling of shame when you’re breaking family tradition. Today, we unpack this metaphor — and then we hear from Andrew. He gives us an update about him and Sam (it’s exciting), and he shares advice for others who are struggling to take a bite of their own ham sandwiches. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9849650859832764}

Before Andrew Limbong went off to college, his mother cautioned him about the dire consequences he would face if he hugged a girl. Andrew grew up in a strict Christian household, and his parents are Indonesian immigrants, so they never spoke about sex at home. When Andrew was 20, he met his first girlfriend, Sam. As they started dating, he felt his cultural and parental influences putting “pressure on my blood vessels, not allowing the blood to go where I oh so desperately wanted it to,” he wrote in his Modern Love essay in 2011. According to Andrew’s Muslim American friend, his fears were the result of the “ham sandwich” effect: the feeling of shame when you’re breaking family tradition. Today, we unpack this metaphor — and then we hear from Andrew. He gives us an update about him and Sam (it’s exciting), and he shares advice for others who are struggling to take a bite of their own ham sandwiches. Evidence

nytimes\motivation-energy-advice.txt

Using custom data configuration default-cbfe731fdc0e781b

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-cbfe731fdc0e781b\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-cbfe731fdc0e781b\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

This April, I was feeling good. I’d figured out the public pool’s lane-reservation system and swam several times a week. I couldn’t wait to write new stories once my kids went back to school. With vaccines on their way, I even made travel plans. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8682533502578735}
Three months later, I’m in a slump. The pool stopped requiring reservations, but I haven’t been since June. Between Covid-19 variants and Western wildfires, I’m not fired up about a family road trip. And when my editor asked me to research a story about motivation, all I could think was: Ugh. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9409634470939636}
Motivation is the energy that gets us to take action — and I’m not the only one finding it hard to come by. Some of us might have full-on burnout after a year-plus of loss, grief and pandemic challenges. Others could feel more like I do — nothing’s terribly wrong, but we can’t quite find our spark. Whatever situation we’re in, a closer look at motivation might give us more fuel to move forward, both day-to-day and into an uncertain future. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9234091639518738}
As you look for your motivation, it helps to think of it falling into two categories, said Stefano Di Domenico, a motivation researcher who teaches at the University of Toronto Scarborough. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6043033003807068}
First, there’s controlled motivation, when you feel you’re being ruled by outside forces like end-of-year bonuses and deadlines — or inner carrots and sticks, like guilt or people-pleasing. It’s hard to stay motivated when you’re not in the driver’s seat. Often when people say they’ve lost motivation, “what they really mean,” Dr. Di Domenico said, “is ‘I’m doing this because I have to, not because I want to.’” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9831962585449219}
The second kind, autonomous motivation, is what we’re seeking. This is when you feel like you’re self-directed, whether you have a natural affinity for the task at hand, or you’re doing something because you understand why it’s worthwhile. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8723608255386353}
I wanted more of that feeling. But when it came to this story, I found that motivation touches so many parts of our lives — school, work, exercise, volunteering, health — that I didn’t know where to begin. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3734574615955353}
I needed to start small. So I started with a cup of tea. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5190967917442322}
Looking forward to a reward isn’t the best for long-term motivation. But several studies suggest that pairing small, immediate rewards to a task improves both motivation and fun. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3977574408054352}
Lora Park, an associate professor of psychology at the University at Buffalo, ran marathons before kids but now finds it can be hard to find a workout window before dark. When she uses the treadmill for an evening workout, she pairs it with Netflix to make running inside more pleasant. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9241139888763428}
I gave it a try. I found a favorite mug that I only use while writing and made a special tea or hot chocolate to sip in front of the computer. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5966835618019104}
Tea can only take you so far, though. Clinical psychologist Richard M. Ryan, one of two scientists who developed a well-known approach to understanding motivation called self-determination theory, encourages those seeking lasting motivation to take a deep dive into their values. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.5054188966751099}
Dr. Ryan, a professor at Australian Catholic University in North Sydney, said that when you connect the things that are important to you to the things you need to do — even the drudgeries — you can feel more in control of your actions. What do you love about your work? What core value does it meet? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7087408304214478}
Writing about your values can be a good start, said Tanaya Winder, an Albuquerque-based motivational speaker and poet. Ms. Winder, who teaches workshops on reconnecting to your sense of purpose, often has students free write about what makes them come alive. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6788966655731201}
I tried writing down a few words that resonated with my values. One that kept coming up for me was connection — another key part of motivation. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5124651789665222}
Ms. Winder said she draws her sense of purpose from her community — she is Duckwater Shoshone, Pyramid Lake Paiute and Southern Ute — and suggested considering how your motivation is tied to the people around you, whether that’s your family or your basketball team. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8529496788978577}
Social connections like this are critical to rekindling motivation, Dr. Park said, especially following the pandemic’s forced isolation. “Without that fundamental connection, motivation just starts to wither.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.715919017791748}
Feeling blah at work? Contact colleagues to collaborate on a project or to ask for specific advice relevant to their expertise. Or organize a brainstorming session, after-work meet-up or other activity to create that connection. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.7081015110015869}
Reaching out lifts others, too. “Letting someone know that you are thinking of them is enough to kick-start their motivation,” and reminds them that you care, Dr. Park said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7411485314369202}
Recently, she sent a spontaneous thank-you note to a former college professor, thanking her for teaching a challenging, inspiring class. The professor responded quickly, saying that Dr. Park’s email had raised her flagging spirits. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8037822246551514}
People also motivate each other through competition. In a 2016 study, researchers grouped students in an 11-week exercise program into small, online social networks: some groups were competitive, others provided support. Students in competitive groups exercised much more often than those in supportive social networks, said Damon Centola, the senior author of the study and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.984728217124939}
People around us influence us more than we might like to believe — so harness that influence by seeking out a dose of competition when you need motivation to exercise, said Dr. Centola, whose book, “Change: How to Make Big Things Happen,” looks at how social networks fuel change. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6384022831916809}
New athletic adventures can be motivational gold, too. A 2020 study suggested that trying out novel activities can help you stick with exercise. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5008112192153931}
I needed a little of both: I haven’t returned to the pool, but I heard about a friend’s half-marathon and got the urge to push myself, so I found a fall trail race and started training. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6693800687789917}
When it comes to writing, though, competition just stresses me out. My internal monologue becomes a meanspirited aerobics instructor who says things like, “You’re lazy and ungrateful!” and “Finish this story, or you’ll never work again!” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.40616968274116516}
This doesn’t help. Treating ourselves with compassion works much more effectively than beating ourselves up, said Kristin Neff, an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. “People think they’re going to shame themselves into action,” yet self-compassion helps people stay focused on their goals, reduces fear of failure and improves self-confidence, which can also improve motivation, she said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.47200486063957214}
To start, Dr. Neff suggested pausing to ask yourself what you need. Maybe you’ll find it’s time to refocus on your purpose, or notice you’re ready to ask for outside support. Sometimes simply acknowledging you’re going through a hard time, and that this is a normal part of life, is all it takes. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.40504100918769836}
Self-compassion doesn’t mean you’ll go soft or lose your drive, Dr. Neff said. Her new book, “Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive,” highlights a study of university students who did poorly on a challenging vocabulary test. Students who were encouraged to be compassionate toward themselves after the test studied longer and performed better on a follow-up test, compared to students given either simple self-esteem-boosting comments or no instruction. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9778991937637329}
“The key thing about self-compassion and motivation is that it allows you to learn from your failures,” Dr. Neff said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.706603467464447}
And I’ve got plenty of failures to learn from, so on a morning run, I gave self-compassion a try. What did I need? First, exercise and more sleep. I could consider new approaches to this story and ask some colleagues for advice. Then I realized what I really needed to do: pay attention. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9185405373573303}
I looked around. Even at dawn, I wasn’t alone: I saw dog walkers and maintenance workers, people commuting to work, people pulling up their masks. I imagined people in hospitals and homes, starting a new day whether they felt like it or not. The idea of all of us, trying and failing and trying again, carried me to the end of the run and to the end of this story. And if you’re still reading, you’ve found enough motivation to get here, too. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.7321572303771973}

This April, I was feeling good. I’d figured out the public pool’s lane-reservation system and swam several times a week. I couldn’t wait to write new stories once my kids went back to school. With vaccines on their way, I even made travel plans. Three months later, I’m in a slump. The pool stopped requiring reservations, but I haven’t been since June. Between Covid-19 variants and Western wildfires, I’m not fired up about a family road trip. And when my editor asked me to research a story about motivation, all I could think was: Ugh. Motivation is the energy that gets us to take action — and I’m not the only one finding it hard to come by. Some of us might have full-on burnout after a year-plus of loss, grief and pandemic challenges. Others could feel more like I do — nothing’s terribly wrong, but we can’t quite find our spark. Whatever situation we’re in, a closer look at motivation might give us more fuel to move forward, both day-to-day and into an uncertain future. Evidence As you look for your motivation, it helps to think of it falling into two categories, said Stefano Di Domenico, a motivation researcher who teaches at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Claim First, there’s controlled motivation, when you feel you’re being ruled by outside forces like end-of-year bonuses and deadlines — or inner carrots and sticks, like guilt or people-pleasing. It’s hard to stay motivated when you’re not in the driver’s seat. Often when people say they’ve lost motivation, “what they really mean,” Dr. Di Domenico said, “is ‘I’m doing this because I have to, not because I want to.’” Evidence The second kind, autonomous motivation, is what we’re seeking. This is when you feel like you’re self-directed, whether you have a natural affinity for the task at hand, or you’re doing something because you understand why it’s worthwhile. I wanted more of that feeling. But when it came to this story, I found that motivation touches so many parts of our lives — school, work, exercise, volunteering, health — that I didn’t know where to begin. Claim I needed to start small. So I started with a cup of tea. Looking forward to a reward isn’t the best for long-term motivation. But several studies suggest that pairing small, immediate rewards to a task improves both motivation and fun. Lora Park, an associate professor of psychology at the University at Buffalo, ran marathons before kids but now finds it can be hard to find a workout window before dark. When she uses the treadmill for an evening workout, she pairs it with Netflix to make running inside more pleasant. I gave it a try. I found a favorite mug that I only use while writing and made a special tea or hot chocolate to sip in front of the computer. Evidence Tea can only take you so far, though. Clinical psychologist Richard M. Ryan, one of two scientists who developed a well-known approach to understanding motivation called self-determination theory, encourages those seeking lasting motivation to take a deep dive into their values. Rebuttal Dr. Ryan, a professor at Australian Catholic University in North Sydney, said that when you connect the things that are important to you to the things you need to do — even the drudgeries — you can feel more in control of your actions. What do you love about your work? What core value does it meet? Writing about your values can be a good start, said Tanaya Winder, an Albuquerque-based motivational speaker and poet. Ms. Winder, who teaches workshops on reconnecting to your sense of purpose, often has students free write about what makes them come alive. Evidence I tried writing down a few words that resonated with my values. One that kept coming up for me was connection — another key part of motivation. Claim Ms. Winder said she draws her sense of purpose from her community — she is Duckwater Shoshone, Pyramid Lake Paiute and Southern Ute — and suggested considering how your motivation is tied to the people around you, whether that’s your family or your basketball team. Social connections like this are critical to rekindling motivation, Dr. Park said, especially following the pandemic’s forced isolation. “Without that fundamental connection, motivation just starts to wither.” Evidence Feeling blah at work? Contact colleagues to collaborate on a project or to ask for specific advice relevant to their expertise. Or organize a brainstorming session, after-work meet-up or other activity to create that connection. Lead Reaching out lifts others, too. “Letting someone know that you are thinking of them is enough to kick-start their motivation,” and reminds them that you care, Dr. Park said. Recently, she sent a spontaneous thank-you note to a former college professor, thanking her for teaching a challenging, inspiring class. The professor responded quickly, saying that Dr. Park’s email had raised her flagging spirits. People also motivate each other through competition. In a 2016 study, researchers grouped students in an 11-week exercise program into small, online social networks: some groups were competitive, others provided support. Students in competitive groups exercised much more often than those in supportive social networks, said Damon Centola, the senior author of the study and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. People around us influence us more than we might like to believe — so harness that influence by seeking out a dose of competition when you need motivation to exercise, said Dr. Centola, whose book, “Change: How to Make Big Things Happen,” looks at how social networks fuel change. Evidence New athletic adventures can be motivational gold, too. A 2020 study suggested that trying out novel activities can help you stick with exercise. Claim I needed a little of both: I haven’t returned to the pool, but I heard about a friend’s half-marathon and got the urge to push myself, so I found a fall trail race and started training. When it comes to writing, though, competition just stresses me out. My internal monologue becomes a meanspirited aerobics instructor who says things like, “You’re lazy and ungrateful!” and “Finish this story, or you’ll never work again!” This doesn’t help. Treating ourselves with compassion works much more effectively than beating ourselves up, said Kristin Neff, an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. “People think they’re going to shame themselves into action,” yet self-compassion helps people stay focused on their goals, reduces fear of failure and improves self-confidence, which can also improve motivation, she said. To start, Dr. Neff suggested pausing to ask yourself what you need. Maybe you’ll find it’s time to refocus on your purpose, or notice you’re ready to ask for outside support. Sometimes simply acknowledging you’re going through a hard time, and that this is a normal part of life, is all it takes. Self-compassion doesn’t mean you’ll go soft or lose your drive, Dr. Neff said. Her new book, “Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive,” highlights a study of university students who did poorly on a challenging vocabulary test. Students who were encouraged to be compassionate toward themselves after the test studied longer and performed better on a follow-up test, compared to students given either simple self-esteem-boosting comments or no instruction. Evidence “The key thing about self-compassion and motivation is that it allows you to learn from your failures,” Dr. Neff said. Claim And I’ve got plenty of failures to learn from, so on a morning run, I gave self-compassion a try. What did I need? First, exercise and more sleep. I could consider new approaches to this story and ask some colleagues for advice. Then I realized what I really needed to do: pay attention. Evidence I looked around. Even at dawn, I wasn’t alone: I saw dog walkers and maintenance workers, people commuting to work, people pulling up their masks. I imagined people in hospitals and homes, starting a new day whether they felt like it or not. The idea of all of us, trying and failing and trying again, carried me to the end of the run and to the end of this story. And if you’re still reading, you’ve found enough motivation to get here, too. Lead

nytimes\nashville-gerrymandering-republican-democrat.txt

Using custom data configuration default-44b057146028e639

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-44b057146028e639\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-44b057146028e639\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

NASHVILLE — Not since Patsy Cline made it a country standard in 1961, perhaps, has “I Fall to Pieces” resonated so poignantly in Music City. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.38449567556381226}
Nashville has been represented by a single seat in the House of Representatives for as long as Tennessee has been a state. The seat has been held by a Democrat for 147 years. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7410423755645752}
All that was blown up this month when Gov. Bill Lee signed into law new political maps approved by fellow Republicans in the state legislature. The maps dismembered Nashville’s solidly Democratic House district and scattered its remains among three new districts that stretch deep into Republican rural areas. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9495350122451782}
Almost certainly, each of the next House members representing parts of Nashville will be a conservative Republican. To Democrats, the Nashville gerrymander is an especially egregious twist of the political knife by a rural-dominated Republican legislature that regards the big city with a mixture of disdain and envy. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8729564547538757}
“Dividing the capital city up three ways like Berlin is how you treat an enemy you’re trying to defeat, not a political rival,” said Jeff Yarbro, the State Senate’s Democratic leader. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6113879680633545}
Republicans call that criticism overwrought. But the move hints at an epic tug of war about the city’s future — one that reflects the nation’s divisions and yet is unique to Nashville. Subplots abound, but perhaps the most intriguing may be that the rural conservatives carving up the city are the very people whom Nashville’s music has historically celebrated. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6602258086204529}
Nashville has grown as a diverse, largely Democratic boomtown that is a mix of hometown bravado, sophisticated education and health care, a history of cultural and political moderation, and the many streams of American music flourishing in the city. President Biden carried 64.5 percent of the vote in Davidson County, whose government merged with Nashville in 1963. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7436693906784058}
But these days Republicans see something else: an advertisement for red-state values with calling cards that include the cultural juggernaut of country music — even if its artists and messages are hardly a political monolith — low taxes and a parade of conservative figures flocking there to set up media shops or run for office. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.7385576367378235}
The differing visions reflect a city that has emerged as a credible rival to Atlanta as a whiter, more conservative Southern cultural and political center. It also has become a leading contender to host the 2024 Republican National Convention. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8840126991271973}
“Nashville is not on the Republican National Committee’s short list because of any doubt about Tennessee’s 11 electoral votes,” said Kent Syler, a professor and expert on state politics at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro. “It is there because Nashville’s image speaks to swing voters across Middle America.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9502096176147461}
For many, Nashville seems a charmed place these days, even if the honky-tonk Bourbon Street that downtown Broadway has become is giving some residents second thoughts about whether all this prosperity is such a good thing. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.43684276938438416}
Economically, the city is on a tear, constructing high-rises and corporate campuses for companies like Amazon and Oracle and luring throngs of young, often progressive-minded workers to fill them. A 30,000-seat Major League Soccer stadium is getting finishing touches south of downtown, civic leaders are angling for a Major League Baseball franchise, and the airport is expanding to accommodate a projected five million new passengers a year by 2023. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9367343783378601}
The city and nearby counties already accounted for many of the 565,000 new residents the state added in the last decade. By 2027, the region is expected to welcome another 200,000. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9382428526878357}
Much credit for that prosperity goes to the economic development efforts of old-school moderate politicians of both parties like the former governors Lamar Alexander, a Republican, and Phil Bredesen, a Democrat. But a state legislature ruled by a new generation of Trump-friendly rural conservatives is now in charge, focused on social issues and eager to rein liberal urban policies and mores. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9805353283882141}
Last year alone, legislators passed laws focusing on transgender students over their choice of bathrooms and participation in sports, and requiring women to bury or cremate the remains of abortions. An alliance with a conservative Christian college to set up scores of charter schools in the state was a highlight of Governor Lee’s State of the State speech last month. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.981920063495636}
But the gerrymander has drawn the sharpest rebukes. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.9186825752258301}
“Until this year, full-throated Trumpism seemed to kind of stop at borders like Williamson County,” said Jon Meacham, the presidential biographer and Nashville resident, referring to the Republican suburbs at the city’s southern edge. “The redistricting represents a consequential incursion of what a lot of folks felt was contained. And that was the legislature’s point, of course.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9489189982414246}
The current Democratic occupant of the House seat, Representative Jim Cooper, called the gerrymander “a disaster for the future of the city.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4976767897605896}
“It’s not about me,” said Mr. Cooper, a moderate in his 16th term who announced his retirement after the new districts were disclosed. “I’ve had a good career. But it deprives 29 percent of Tennesseans of their political voice, and it completely violates Nashville’s history and heritage.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7833755612373352}
A legal challenge is possible but viewed as a long shot. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6523550748825073}
Scott Golden, the chairman of the state Republican Party, said it was time for a change. “A united Republican leadership in Tennessee has only been around for 11 years,” he said. “The previous 175 years belonged to the Democratic Party. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8549041152000427}
“Nashville is a dynamic city, and it’ll be interesting to see what happens when you have Republican members of Congress representing them.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.447957843542099}
The new political map has one other consequence that riles critics: It snuffs out the ambitions of Black voters to send a Black representative to Congress or play any significant role in congressional elections. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.5448476076126099}
One in four Davidson County residents is Black, and about one in 10 is Hispanic; in 2020, Black candidates in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate ran one-two in the city. One Black challenger to Mr. Cooper, who is white, dropped his bid after the redistricting occurred; a second is re-evaluating her candidacy. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9834780097007751}
Charlane Oliver, a co-founder of the Equity Alliance, a voting rights advocacy group, said the new House seat boundaries were drawn “with surgical precision right through all the predominantly Black neighborhoods in Nashville.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.692857027053833}
“They’re doing what they can to rig the system so they can rule from a minority place,” she said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.44913601875305176}
Nashville’s boom is luring two distinctly different populations. Young progressives are coming in droves for high-paying tech and finance jobs. But older workers, retirees and plenty of conservatives are streaming in from both coasts, attracted by low taxes — there is no state income tax, though sales taxes are stiff — and the country-music evocation of homespun values, personal freedom and unfettered patriotism. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8369365334510803}
The newcomers include luminaries from the conservative power structure, including a contingent of Fox News and Daily Wire commentators like Tomi Lahren, Matt Walsh and Candace Owens. The Daily Wire, a widely read conservative news and opinion outlet, moved to Nashville from Los Angeles in 2020. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9759607315063477}
Parler, the Twitter clone known for hosting advocates of the Jan. 6 riot, followed last year. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5510144829750061}
Most recently, Morgan Ortagus, the frequent Fox News guest and State Department spokeswoman during the Trump administration, moved to town — and was quickly endorsed by Mr. Trump for the new Fifth Congressional District, angering some prominent Republicans who preferred Robby Starbuck, a conservative filmmaker and another relative newcomer. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.974592924118042}
“My husband and I moved to Nashville because we wanted to raise our daughter in a state that embraces conservative values,” Ms. Ortagus said in an email. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.66319340467453}
Not all Republicans are welcoming the MAGA-certified would-be candidates. On Tuesday, a State Senate committee approved legislation that would bar anyone who had not lived in Tennessee for three years from running for either the U.S. House or Senate. That would apparently leave out both Ms. Ortagus and Mr. Starbuck. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9571742415428162}
For once, Democrats and Republicans sort of agreed. The bill’s sponsor, State Senator Frank S. Niceley, said the bill would discourage wealthy “people flying over Tennessee and saying, ‘Look, there’s an open district.’” Mr. Yarbro, the Senate’s Democratic leader, said the conservative newcomers “couldn’t find a honky-tonk with a flashlight and a map of Broadway.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8857279419898987}
Nor is it clear the city covets the Republican convention. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.794440746307373}
Mayor John Cooper — the congressman’s brother — was studiously noncommittal, saying in a statement that the area welcomed interest from either party in a convention if it “makes business sense for the city and aligns with Nashville’s values.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7300376892089844}
Exactly how this plays out over the long haul remains unclear. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5532132983207703}
Republicans are wagering that their gerrymander will contain Nashville’s Democratic energies for at least the next decade. While the city added nearly 90,000 residents in the last census, its suburban collar counties added more than 220,000. Republicans’ hope is that those new residents will favor them over Democrats. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9509385228157043}
But that is not a sure bet. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.9476887583732605}
“It might backfire on them,” Professor Syler said. “Those counties are safely Republican now, but they’re starting to trend Democratic,” a trend that picked up steam in the 2020 presidential election. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6999370455741882}
Others worry that domination by a hard-right legislature could turn off potential newcomers. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.9585226774215698}
“I hope that the carving up of Nashville doesn’t cause people and firms to have second thoughts about coming here,” said Frank M. Garrison, a former investment-firm executive and Nashville civic leader. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.4509880244731903}
Cameron Sexton, the State House speaker from the eastern Tennessee town of Crossville, said concerns that the legislature could kill the golden goose were groundless. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5789461731910706}
“Maybe if you’re more progressive, you might not want to come to Tennessee, but we’re still attracting a whole lot of new people here,” he told the Nashville public radio station WPLN last month. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5669665336608887}
Mr. Meacham said he was not sure the goose was so safe. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5186339020729065}
“This feels to me as though we’re beginning to play with culture-war fire,” he said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5041452646255493}

NASHVILLE — Not since Patsy Cline made it a country standard in 1961, perhaps, has “I Fall to Pieces” resonated so poignantly in Music City. Claim Nashville has been represented by a single seat in the House of Representatives for as long as Tennessee has been a state. The seat has been held by a Democrat for 147 years. All that was blown up this month when Gov. Bill Lee signed into law new political maps approved by fellow Republicans in the state legislature. The maps dismembered Nashville’s solidly Democratic House district and scattered its remains among three new districts that stretch deep into Republican rural areas. Almost certainly, each of the next House members representing parts of Nashville will be a conservative Republican. To Democrats, the Nashville gerrymander is an especially egregious twist of the political knife by a rural-dominated Republican legislature that regards the big city with a mixture of disdain and envy. “Dividing the capital city up three ways like Berlin is how you treat an enemy you’re trying to defeat, not a political rival,” said Jeff Yarbro, the State Senate’s Democratic leader. Republicans call that criticism overwrought. But the move hints at an epic tug of war about the city’s future — one that reflects the nation’s divisions and yet is unique to Nashville. Subplots abound, but perhaps the most intriguing may be that the rural conservatives carving up the city are the very people whom Nashville’s music has historically celebrated. Nashville has grown as a diverse, largely Democratic boomtown that is a mix of hometown bravado, sophisticated education and health care, a history of cultural and political moderation, and the many streams of American music flourishing in the city. President Biden carried 64.5 percent of the vote in Davidson County, whose government merged with Nashville in 1963. Evidence But these days Republicans see something else: an advertisement for red-state values with calling cards that include the cultural juggernaut of country music — even if its artists and messages are hardly a political monolith — low taxes and a parade of conservative figures flocking there to set up media shops or run for office. Rebuttal The differing visions reflect a city that has emerged as a credible rival to Atlanta as a whiter, more conservative Southern cultural and political center. It also has become a leading contender to host the 2024 Republican National Convention. “Nashville is not on the Republican National Committee’s short list because of any doubt about Tennessee’s 11 electoral votes,” said Kent Syler, a professor and expert on state politics at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro. “It is there because Nashville’s image speaks to swing voters across Middle America.” For many, Nashville seems a charmed place these days, even if the honky-tonk Bourbon Street that downtown Broadway has become is giving some residents second thoughts about whether all this prosperity is such a good thing. Economically, the city is on a tear, constructing high-rises and corporate campuses for companies like Amazon and Oracle and luring throngs of young, often progressive-minded workers to fill them. A 30,000-seat Major League Soccer stadium is getting finishing touches south of downtown, civic leaders are angling for a Major League Baseball franchise, and the airport is expanding to accommodate a projected five million new passengers a year by 2023. The city and nearby counties already accounted for many of the 565,000 new residents the state added in the last decade. By 2027, the region is expected to welcome another 200,000. Much credit for that prosperity goes to the economic development efforts of old-school moderate politicians of both parties like the former governors Lamar Alexander, a Republican, and Phil Bredesen, a Democrat. But a state legislature ruled by a new generation of Trump-friendly rural conservatives is now in charge, focused on social issues and eager to rein liberal urban policies and mores. Last year alone, legislators passed laws focusing on transgender students over their choice of bathrooms and participation in sports, and requiring women to bury or cremate the remains of abortions. An alliance with a conservative Christian college to set up scores of charter schools in the state was a highlight of Governor Lee’s State of the State speech last month. Evidence But the gerrymander has drawn the sharpest rebukes. Rebuttal “Until this year, full-throated Trumpism seemed to kind of stop at borders like Williamson County,” said Jon Meacham, the presidential biographer and Nashville resident, referring to the Republican suburbs at the city’s southern edge. “The redistricting represents a consequential incursion of what a lot of folks felt was contained. And that was the legislature’s point, of course.” Evidence The current Democratic occupant of the House seat, Representative Jim Cooper, called the gerrymander “a disaster for the future of the city.” Claim “It’s not about me,” said Mr. Cooper, a moderate in his 16th term who announced his retirement after the new districts were disclosed. “I’ve had a good career. But it deprives 29 percent of Tennesseans of their political voice, and it completely violates Nashville’s history and heritage.” Evidence A legal challenge is possible but viewed as a long shot. Claim Scott Golden, the chairman of the state Republican Party, said it was time for a change. “A united Republican leadership in Tennessee has only been around for 11 years,” he said. “The previous 175 years belonged to the Democratic Party. Evidence “Nashville is a dynamic city, and it’ll be interesting to see what happens when you have Republican members of Congress representing them.” Claim The new political map has one other consequence that riles critics: It snuffs out the ambitions of Black voters to send a Black representative to Congress or play any significant role in congressional elections. Counterclaim One in four Davidson County residents is Black, and about one in 10 is Hispanic; in 2020, Black candidates in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate ran one-two in the city. One Black challenger to Mr. Cooper, who is white, dropped his bid after the redistricting occurred; a second is re-evaluating her candidacy. Charlane Oliver, a co-founder of the Equity Alliance, a voting rights advocacy group, said the new House seat boundaries were drawn “with surgical precision right through all the predominantly Black neighborhoods in Nashville.” Evidence “They’re doing what they can to rig the system so they can rule from a minority place,” she said. Claim Nashville’s boom is luring two distinctly different populations. Young progressives are coming in droves for high-paying tech and finance jobs. But older workers, retirees and plenty of conservatives are streaming in from both coasts, attracted by low taxes — there is no state income tax, though sales taxes are stiff — and the country-music evocation of homespun values, personal freedom and unfettered patriotism. The newcomers include luminaries from the conservative power structure, including a contingent of Fox News and Daily Wire commentators like Tomi Lahren, Matt Walsh and Candace Owens. The Daily Wire, a widely read conservative news and opinion outlet, moved to Nashville from Los Angeles in 2020. Evidence Parler, the Twitter clone known for hosting advocates of the Jan. 6 riot, followed last year. Claim Most recently, Morgan Ortagus, the frequent Fox News guest and State Department spokeswoman during the Trump administration, moved to town — and was quickly endorsed by Mr. Trump for the new Fifth Congressional District, angering some prominent Republicans who preferred Robby Starbuck, a conservative filmmaker and another relative newcomer. “My husband and I moved to Nashville because we wanted to raise our daughter in a state that embraces conservative values,” Ms. Ortagus said in an email. Not all Republicans are welcoming the MAGA-certified would-be candidates. On Tuesday, a State Senate committee approved legislation that would bar anyone who had not lived in Tennessee for three years from running for either the U.S. House or Senate. That would apparently leave out both Ms. Ortagus and Mr. Starbuck. For once, Democrats and Republicans sort of agreed. The bill’s sponsor, State Senator Frank S. Niceley, said the bill would discourage wealthy “people flying over Tennessee and saying, ‘Look, there’s an open district.’” Mr. Yarbro, the Senate’s Democratic leader, said the conservative newcomers “couldn’t find a honky-tonk with a flashlight and a map of Broadway.” Evidence Nor is it clear the city covets the Republican convention. Claim Mayor John Cooper — the congressman’s brother — was studiously noncommittal, saying in a statement that the area welcomed interest from either party in a convention if it “makes business sense for the city and aligns with Nashville’s values.” Evidence Exactly how this plays out over the long haul remains unclear. Claim Republicans are wagering that their gerrymander will contain Nashville’s Democratic energies for at least the next decade. While the city added nearly 90,000 residents in the last census, its suburban collar counties added more than 220,000. Republicans’ hope is that those new residents will favor them over Democrats. Evidence But that is not a sure bet. Rebuttal “It might backfire on them,” Professor Syler said. “Those counties are safely Republican now, but they’re starting to trend Democratic,” a trend that picked up steam in the 2020 presidential election. Evidence Others worry that domination by a hard-right legislature could turn off potential newcomers. Counterclaim “I hope that the carving up of Nashville doesn’t cause people and firms to have second thoughts about coming here,” said Frank M. Garrison, a former investment-firm executive and Nashville civic leader. Concluding Statement Cameron Sexton, the State House speaker from the eastern Tennessee town of Crossville, said concerns that the legislature could kill the golden goose were groundless. “Maybe if you’re more progressive, you might not want to come to Tennessee, but we’re still attracting a whole lot of new people here,” he told the Nashville public radio station WPLN last month. Evidence Mr. Meacham said he was not sure the goose was so safe. “This feels to me as though we’re beginning to play with culture-war fire,” he said. Claim

nytimes\natural-wines.txt

Using custom data configuration default-6b57923f8f7bd2e7

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-6b57923f8f7bd2e7\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-6b57923f8f7bd2e7\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

As polarizing as natural wine has been, as heated and contentious as the arguments have gotten over its name and its reasons for being, its audience continues to expand, as do the number of producers. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6595341563224792}
Recently, I went shopping online for natural wines and found a dozen that are a pleasure to recommend. I might have included twice that many as I found bottles everywhere and from all over. The 12 I recommend are from New York, California, Australia, Chile, the Czech Republic, Spain, Germany, Austria, Italy and France. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9872719645500183}
Among natural wine’s growing audience, some have surely been attracted because they think it’s fashionable. Others are curious about wines made outside the norm, wines that combine a respect for nature with traditional methods of production and that both taste and feel really good. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8349119424819946}
Regardless of the initial allure, for many the appeal has lasted. Most striking is how popular natural wine seems to be among younger people, the demographic that the mainstream wine industry has the most difficulty reaching. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3076111078262329}
But though the number of producers has grown, the production of natural wine is necessarily small and labor intensive. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8613823056221008}
The ethos of the genre is to farm organically; to ferment the grapes while adding nothing except, perhaps, a little sulfur dioxide, an antioxidant and stabilizer that has long been used in wine; and to remove nothing. It is a hands-on process that cannot be automated or mechanized for efficiency’s sake. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7873809933662415}
Natural wine is ultimately an ideal that producers aim for, but are not always able to meet. So it is fitting that these winemakers’ intentions are idealistic. Whether their objective is to work in harmony with nature rather than exploiting it, to preserve local traditions and culture or simply to make the best-tasting wine for themselves and their customers, the wines and the production principles take precedence over profits. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.8344821333885193}
In mass-market winemaking, wine must be protected against possible spoilage during every step of the production process. The cultured yeast, the enzymes and the overuse of sulfur dioxide are all compromises aimed at protecting the investment. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5038291811943054}
By contrast, natural winemaking is risky. It requires meticulous care in both the vineyard and the cellar as overly casual viticulture or winemaking can doom a batch of wine. To look at it another way, making natural wine requires great skill because mistakes can’t be undone with additions or technology. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.4953267276287079}
It’s an arduous task, but the results can be thrilling. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5844953060150146}
This is not to say that people should drink only natural wine. An entire spectrum of methods and intentions exists between the poles of natural and industrial, and consumers have their reasons for selecting what they like, whether preference, convenience or budget. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.37995585799217224}
I’m drawn to natural wines because I love the unmediated flavors and expressions that come from grape to glass. I love the clear sense of place I often find and being able to sense the personalities of the producers in the glass. I’m moved by the respect for culture and tradition inherent in natural wine. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7524094581604004}
This last point is important. Natural wine producers in historic regions are largely responsible for rediscovering and protecting local grapes and styles, which, if bureaucrats and powerful critics had their way, might have disappeared. Instead, we have the diversity of grapes and styles that is the joy of wine culture today. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7005641460418701}
I’m not blindly devoted to natural wines. Certain flaws occur that I don’t see in more mainstream bottles, like mousiness, an odd quality reminiscent of cedar shavings in mouse cages that can only be sensed retronasally, after the wine has been in the mouth. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.30512967705726624}
I found a few mousy bottles in this batch and did not include them among the 12 bottles, just as I would not recommend unbalanced or insipid wines, flaws more typical of mainstream labels. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7229268550872803}
Because it is so laborious and personal to produce, natural wine is hard to scale up. It is necessarily made in small quantities, so these wines may only be available in certain parts of the country. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5142799019813538}
One characteristic of natural wine culture is to question authority, including that of wine critics. So, even if you do find these bottles, feel free to experiment, to try other others. Good wine shops ought to at least have a small selection, so ask for suggestions and make your own discoveries. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9026668667793274}
Here are my 12 recommendations, from lowest to highest price. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.540062665939331}
Roberto Henríquez Secano Interior Itata Rivera del Notro Blanco 2020, 12 percent, $23 {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4652659296989441}
Roberto Henríquez Ascencio made wine in Canada, South Africa and the Loire Valley before settling in the Bío Bío region of Chile. He works with very old vines that have been farmed organically or biodynamically. This fresh orange wine is made of roughly equal parts sémillon, muscat of Alexandria and corinto, better known as Pedro Ximénez. It’s intensely floral, lightly textured and altogether delicious. (T. Edward Wine, New York) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9895702600479126}
Absentee Winery California Red Wine 2019, 14.5 percent, $26 {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5507266521453857}
The minimalist label on this bottle tells you almost everything you need to know. The wine? It’s red. The ingredients? Grapes. That’s it. The proprietor, Avram Deixler, worked all over the world before setting up shop in Point Reyes Station in northern Marin County, where he grew up. This bottle, as I later learned, is made with carignan, syrah, zinfandel, petite sirah and abouriou, all grown organically in Mendocino County. The wine is fresh and alive, mildly tannic, direct and to the point. It’s potent, but wears its power lightly. Abouriou, by the way, is a grape from southwestern France that used to be popular in California, where it was known as “early burgundy” for its tendency to ripen quickly. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9809255003929138}
Ca’ de Noci Emilia Rosso Bio Sottobosco 2020, 10 percent, $27 {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4461561441421509}
When I drank this earthy, savory, sparkling red wine from Emilia-Romagna I imagined I had gotten it directly from a farmhouse there. It’s not rustic, it’s simply wonderful — bone-dry, moderately tannic, fruity and stony, unaffected by commercial polish or marketing sensibilities. Not surprising, given Ca’ de Noci’s excellent track record of making superb wines without sulfur dioxide, this wine was perfectly stable. Drink it with pizza, Italian sausages or just for fun. (Louis/Dressner Selections, New York) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9487708806991577}
MicroBio Correcaminos Castilla y Léon 2020, 13 percent, $29 {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5953665971755981}
Ismael Gozalo is the founder and proprietor of MicroBio. He gets grapes from a variety of sources, but his home territory is the village of Nieva in Castilla y Léon, northwest of Madrid. This particular wine, Correcaminos, was made of old vines of verdejo, farmed organically, aged in steel vats and bottled without sulfur dioxide. It’s slightly cloudy, fresh and alive, with earthy, refreshing flavors of fruits, flowers and herbs. (Selections de la Viña/Fruit of the Vines, Long Island City, N.Y.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.955388605594635}
Wild Arc Farm New York State Blackbird 2020, 10.5 percent, $30 {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6085661053657532}
Wild Arc Farm in the Hudson Valley got its start in 2016 and already is in the vanguard of young, imaginative producers working with hybrid grapes. It is best known for its revival of piquette, a lowly beverage given by preindustrial landowners to their agricultural workers, which historically was made by refermenting grape pomace with water. Wild Arc turned it into a delicious, sparkling, low-alcohol beverage that has been widely embraced. Blackbird is not piquette. Rather, it’s a blend of riesling and noiret, a red hybrid, which are fermented together. The result is a thirst quenching, deliciously refreshing, spicy wine that goes down easy. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9551776647567749}
Milan Nestarec Czech Republic OKR 2020, 12.5 percent, $30, 1 liter {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6453218460083008}
Milan Nestarec makes natural wines using grapes from his family vineyards in the Moravia region of the Czech Republic, which is closer to Vienna than to Prague. Over the last decade his wines have gotten better and better. This easy-drinking white blend of chardonnay, grüner veltliner, sauvignon blanc and savagnin is macerated with the skins briefly for a touch of texture and a hint of tannins. With its lively acidity, OKR is like a bolt of energy, dry and thoroughly refreshing. (Jenny & François Selections, New York) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9839030504226685}
2Naturkinder Black Betty Landwein 2019 11.5 percent, $30 {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5349502563476562}
Michael Völker and Melanie Drese, the proprietors of 2Naturkinder (meaning two children of nature in German), make luminous wines from sometimes unlikely combinations of grapes. This one is made mostly of domina, a cross between blauer portugieser, a once popular German grape, with pinot meunier and a little bit of pinot noir. It’s pale garnet, and though domina has the reputation of making tannic wines, this is delicate, almost fragile in its purity and loveliness. The wine is named Betty after the first lamb born in their domina vineyard. (Jenny & François Selections) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9823712110519409}
Florèz Wines Santa Clara Valley Free Solo Old Vine Heritage Blend Red Wine 2020, 13.4 percent, $32 {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7384050488471985}
James Jelks works with dry-farmed, organic and sustainable vineyards in the Santa Cruz area. Free Solo is made with a half dozen different grapes including zinfandel, mourvèdre, carignan, alicante bouschet, petite sirah and black muscat. Made without additives, it is lively and fragrant, with aromas and flavors of flowers, herbs and red fruits. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9848031997680664}
Partida Creus Catalonia BB 2020, 13 percent, $33 {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.48415136337280273}
Massimo Marchiori and Antonella Gerosa, the proprietors of Partida Creus, are originally from Italy but settled in Catalonia, about an hour southwest of Barcelona. They make wines largely from little-known indigenous varieties. This red wine, made with bobal, is a bit of an oddity in that bobal is more typically found down the Mediterranean coast in Valencia. In their hands the wine is fresh and pure, full of energy and tasting deeply of spices, herbs and red fruits. (Selections de la Viña/Fruit of the Vines) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9869721531867981}
Lucy M Adelaide Hills Stupefacente Sangiovese 2020, 12.5 percent, $35 {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5280621647834778}
The Basket Range region in the Adelaide Hills of South Australia is home to a thriving natural wine community. Anton van Klopper, the proprietor of Lucy M, works resolutely without additions and is one of its leading lights. When I took my first taste of Stupefacente, it seemed bright, brashly angular and vibrant, but nothing like sangiovese in my experience. After giving it time in the glass, though, the sharp edges receded and the wine settled into an earthy, dusty, lightly tannic deliciousness. By the way, those who read Rachel Signer’s recent memoir “You Had Me at Pét-Nat” might recognize Mr. van Klopper as the character she called Wildman and later married. (Terrell Wines, San Francisco) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.967843770980835}
Christian Tschida Austria Himmel auf Erden Weiss 2020, 11.5 percent, $40 {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6375887393951416}
Christian Tschida is an uncompromising grower and producer. He farms organically and biodynamically and uses no sulfur dioxide in his winemaking except a little bit in a few reds. This white wine is made from old vines of weissburgunder (or pinot blanc), and scheurebe, both grapes that have not been held in particularly high esteem. Himmel auf Erden Weiss is a dry, refreshing wine of depth and beautiful texture. In the mouth it seems opaque and mysterious, with each swallow inviting another sip in an effort to get to the center of the riddle. (Jenny & François Selections) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9739241003990173}
Matassa Vin de France Tattouine Rouge 2020, 10 percent, $42 {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.487517774105072}
Tom Lubbe, the proprietor of Domaine Matassa, was born in New Zealand. He came to Roussillon in the south of France 20 years ago from South Africa, where he was working. He bought land and started Matassa, where he practices regenerative farming and makes wine with minimal additions. This pale, unfiltered red represents the union of carignan and grenache gris. It’s spicy, earthy and floral and though only 10 percent alcohol, it’s tannic enough to make itself felt on the lips and insides of the cheeks. (Louis/Dressner Selections) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9464173316955566}
Follow NYT Food on Twitter and NYT Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest. Get regular updates from NYT Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9226675033569336}

As polarizing as natural wine has been, as heated and contentious as the arguments have gotten over its name and its reasons for being, its audience continues to expand, as do the number of producers. Claim Recently, I went shopping online for natural wines and found a dozen that are a pleasure to recommend. I might have included twice that many as I found bottles everywhere and from all over. The 12 I recommend are from New York, California, Australia, Chile, the Czech Republic, Spain, Germany, Austria, Italy and France. Among natural wine’s growing audience, some have surely been attracted because they think it’s fashionable. Others are curious about wines made outside the norm, wines that combine a respect for nature with traditional methods of production and that both taste and feel really good. Regardless of the initial allure, for many the appeal has lasted. Most striking is how popular natural wine seems to be among younger people, the demographic that the mainstream wine industry has the most difficulty reaching. Evidence But though the number of producers has grown, the production of natural wine is necessarily small and labor intensive. Rebuttal The ethos of the genre is to farm organically; to ferment the grapes while adding nothing except, perhaps, a little sulfur dioxide, an antioxidant and stabilizer that has long been used in wine; and to remove nothing. It is a hands-on process that cannot be automated or mechanized for efficiency’s sake. Evidence Natural wine is ultimately an ideal that producers aim for, but are not always able to meet. So it is fitting that these winemakers’ intentions are idealistic. Whether their objective is to work in harmony with nature rather than exploiting it, to preserve local traditions and culture or simply to make the best-tasting wine for themselves and their customers, the wines and the production principles take precedence over profits. Concluding Statement In mass-market winemaking, wine must be protected against possible spoilage during every step of the production process. The cultured yeast, the enzymes and the overuse of sulfur dioxide are all compromises aimed at protecting the investment. Evidence By contrast, natural winemaking is risky. It requires meticulous care in both the vineyard and the cellar as overly casual viticulture or winemaking can doom a batch of wine. To look at it another way, making natural wine requires great skill because mistakes can’t be undone with additions or technology. Counterclaim It’s an arduous task, but the results can be thrilling. Claim This is not to say that people should drink only natural wine. An entire spectrum of methods and intentions exists between the poles of natural and industrial, and consumers have their reasons for selecting what they like, whether preference, convenience or budget. I’m drawn to natural wines because I love the unmediated flavors and expressions that come from grape to glass. I love the clear sense of place I often find and being able to sense the personalities of the producers in the glass. I’m moved by the respect for culture and tradition inherent in natural wine. This last point is important. Natural wine producers in historic regions are largely responsible for rediscovering and protecting local grapes and styles, which, if bureaucrats and powerful critics had their way, might have disappeared. Instead, we have the diversity of grapes and styles that is the joy of wine culture today. I’m not blindly devoted to natural wines. Certain flaws occur that I don’t see in more mainstream bottles, like mousiness, an odd quality reminiscent of cedar shavings in mouse cages that can only be sensed retronasally, after the wine has been in the mouth. I found a few mousy bottles in this batch and did not include them among the 12 bottles, just as I would not recommend unbalanced or insipid wines, flaws more typical of mainstream labels. Evidence Because it is so laborious and personal to produce, natural wine is hard to scale up. It is necessarily made in small quantities, so these wines may only be available in certain parts of the country. Claim One characteristic of natural wine culture is to question authority, including that of wine critics. So, even if you do find these bottles, feel free to experiment, to try other others. Good wine shops ought to at least have a small selection, so ask for suggestions and make your own discoveries. Evidence Here are my 12 recommendations, from lowest to highest price. Claim Roberto Henríquez Secano Interior Itata Rivera del Notro Blanco 2020, 12 percent, $23 Roberto Henríquez Ascencio made wine in Canada, South Africa and the Loire Valley before settling in the Bío Bío region of Chile. He works with very old vines that have been farmed organically or biodynamically. This fresh orange wine is made of roughly equal parts sémillon, muscat of Alexandria and corinto, better known as Pedro Ximénez. It’s intensely floral, lightly textured and altogether delicious. (T. Edward Wine, New York) Absentee Winery California Red Wine 2019, 14.5 percent, $26 The minimalist label on this bottle tells you almost everything you need to know. The wine? It’s red. The ingredients? Grapes. That’s it. The proprietor, Avram Deixler, worked all over the world before setting up shop in Point Reyes Station in northern Marin County, where he grew up. This bottle, as I later learned, is made with carignan, syrah, zinfandel, petite sirah and abouriou, all grown organically in Mendocino County. The wine is fresh and alive, mildly tannic, direct and to the point. It’s potent, but wears its power lightly. Abouriou, by the way, is a grape from southwestern France that used to be popular in California, where it was known as “early burgundy” for its tendency to ripen quickly. Ca’ de Noci Emilia Rosso Bio Sottobosco 2020, 10 percent, $27 When I drank this earthy, savory, sparkling red wine from Emilia-Romagna I imagined I had gotten it directly from a farmhouse there. It’s not rustic, it’s simply wonderful — bone-dry, moderately tannic, fruity and stony, unaffected by commercial polish or marketing sensibilities. Not surprising, given Ca’ de Noci’s excellent track record of making superb wines without sulfur dioxide, this wine was perfectly stable. Drink it with pizza, Italian sausages or just for fun. (Louis/Dressner Selections, New York) Evidence MicroBio Correcaminos Castilla y Léon 2020, 13 percent, $29 Claim Ismael Gozalo is the founder and proprietor of MicroBio. He gets grapes from a variety of sources, but his home territory is the village of Nieva in Castilla y Léon, northwest of Madrid. This particular wine, Correcaminos, was made of old vines of verdejo, farmed organically, aged in steel vats and bottled without sulfur dioxide. It’s slightly cloudy, fresh and alive, with earthy, refreshing flavors of fruits, flowers and herbs. (Selections de la Viña/Fruit of the Vines, Long Island City, N.Y.) Wild Arc Farm New York State Blackbird 2020, 10.5 percent, $30 Wild Arc Farm in the Hudson Valley got its start in 2016 and already is in the vanguard of young, imaginative producers working with hybrid grapes. It is best known for its revival of piquette, a lowly beverage given by preindustrial landowners to their agricultural workers, which historically was made by refermenting grape pomace with water. Wild Arc turned it into a delicious, sparkling, low-alcohol beverage that has been widely embraced. Blackbird is not piquette. Rather, it’s a blend of riesling and noiret, a red hybrid, which are fermented together. The result is a thirst quenching, deliciously refreshing, spicy wine that goes down easy. Milan Nestarec Czech Republic OKR 2020, 12.5 percent, $30, 1 liter Milan Nestarec makes natural wines using grapes from his family vineyards in the Moravia region of the Czech Republic, which is closer to Vienna than to Prague. Over the last decade his wines have gotten better and better. This easy-drinking white blend of chardonnay, grüner veltliner, sauvignon blanc and savagnin is macerated with the skins briefly for a touch of texture and a hint of tannins. With its lively acidity, OKR is like a bolt of energy, dry and thoroughly refreshing. (Jenny & François Selections, New York) 2Naturkinder Black Betty Landwein 2019 11.5 percent, $30 Michael Völker and Melanie Drese, the proprietors of 2Naturkinder (meaning two children of nature in German), make luminous wines from sometimes unlikely combinations of grapes. This one is made mostly of domina, a cross between blauer portugieser, a once popular German grape, with pinot meunier and a little bit of pinot noir. It’s pale garnet, and though domina has the reputation of making tannic wines, this is delicate, almost fragile in its purity and loveliness. The wine is named Betty after the first lamb born in their domina vineyard. (Jenny & François Selections) Florèz Wines Santa Clara Valley Free Solo Old Vine Heritage Blend Red Wine 2020, 13.4 percent, $32 James Jelks works with dry-farmed, organic and sustainable vineyards in the Santa Cruz area. Free Solo is made with a half dozen different grapes including zinfandel, mourvèdre, carignan, alicante bouschet, petite sirah and black muscat. Made without additives, it is lively and fragrant, with aromas and flavors of flowers, herbs and red fruits. Partida Creus Catalonia BB 2020, 13 percent, $33 Massimo Marchiori and Antonella Gerosa, the proprietors of Partida Creus, are originally from Italy but settled in Catalonia, about an hour southwest of Barcelona. They make wines largely from little-known indigenous varieties. This red wine, made with bobal, is a bit of an oddity in that bobal is more typically found down the Mediterranean coast in Valencia. In their hands the wine is fresh and pure, full of energy and tasting deeply of spices, herbs and red fruits. (Selections de la Viña/Fruit of the Vines) Lucy M Adelaide Hills Stupefacente Sangiovese 2020, 12.5 percent, $35 The Basket Range region in the Adelaide Hills of South Australia is home to a thriving natural wine community. Anton van Klopper, the proprietor of Lucy M, works resolutely without additions and is one of its leading lights. When I took my first taste of Stupefacente, it seemed bright, brashly angular and vibrant, but nothing like sangiovese in my experience. After giving it time in the glass, though, the sharp edges receded and the wine settled into an earthy, dusty, lightly tannic deliciousness. By the way, those who read Rachel Signer’s recent memoir “You Had Me at Pét-Nat” might recognize Mr. van Klopper as the character she called Wildman and later married. (Terrell Wines, San Francisco) Christian Tschida Austria Himmel auf Erden Weiss 2020, 11.5 percent, $40 Christian Tschida is an uncompromising grower and producer. He farms organically and biodynamically and uses no sulfur dioxide in his winemaking except a little bit in a few reds. This white wine is made from old vines of weissburgunder (or pinot blanc), and scheurebe, both grapes that have not been held in particularly high esteem. Himmel auf Erden Weiss is a dry, refreshing wine of depth and beautiful texture. In the mouth it seems opaque and mysterious, with each swallow inviting another sip in an effort to get to the center of the riddle. (Jenny & François Selections) Matassa Vin de France Tattouine Rouge 2020, 10 percent, $42 Tom Lubbe, the proprietor of Domaine Matassa, was born in New Zealand. He came to Roussillon in the south of France 20 years ago from South Africa, where he was working. He bought land and started Matassa, where he practices regenerative farming and makes wine with minimal additions. This pale, unfiltered red represents the union of carignan and grenache gris. It’s spicy, earthy and floral and though only 10 percent alcohol, it’s tannic enough to make itself felt on the lips and insides of the cheeks. (Louis/Dressner Selections) Follow NYT Food on Twitter and NYT Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest. Get regular updates from NYT Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. Evidence

nytimes\norway-medals-winter-olympics.txt

Using custom data configuration default-d288b555a57403a3

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-d288b555a57403a3\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-d288b555a57403a3\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

BEIJING — They’re doing it again. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.837540864944458}
Norway, with a population of just five million, is executing its quadrennial triumph over the rest of the world. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6768748164176941}
It may not surpass the historic 2018 Pyeongchang Games, when Norway won 39 medals, eight more than its closest competitor, Germany, which has 16 times as many people. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5268270373344421}
But it’s close. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.9412171244621277}
Norway won its 15th gold medal of the Beijing Games on Friday, a record for a single country at a Winter Olympics, a total that put it seven ahead of Russia (population 144 million) in the overall medals table and five ahead of Germany (population 83 million) in the race for the most golds. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9658406376838684}
Its most recent triumph came in men’s biathlon, but Norway also has medals in ski jumping, Nordic combined, speedskating and cross-country and freestyle skiing. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7713460922241211}
“We have a strong team,” said Kjetil Jansrud, the champion Alpine skier. “We always do.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.593873918056488}
More than strong. Norway is now so successful it has become the winter sports beacon. American skiers, both Alpine and cross-country, have trained with Norwegian athletes on the same mountains and glaciers for years. Every year, the country brings 150 of the top international junior cross country skiers to a camp to learn technique and train with the sport’s top coaches. Norway has had a partnership with Britain to develop and share wax technology for Nordic skiing. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9055677056312561}
During the last four years though, several countries have sent their top sports leaders to study the country’s methods — well, the ones its specialists will share — highlighting the latest step in Norway’s elite winter sports hospitality. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5363650918006897}
“After watching what Norway did in Pyeongchang, I just told my team we are going over there, and we are going to figure out what the hell is going on and what they are doing,” said Luke Bodensteiner, then the director of sport for the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, the national governing body for skiing. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9155529141426086}
And so, that spring, Bodensteiner and top executives went to visit their competition. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.508098304271698}
Norway’s willingness to offer tutorials to competitors may seem strange, but, while it wants to win, it also wants to make sure the winter sports its prizes are thriving, and that will only happen if the competition is tough. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.43269696831703186}
Bodensteiner and his team left Norway after a week confident that any country could build a Norwegian-style winter sports machine. All it would take is 30 years and a complete overhaul of the systems that develop young athletes. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7130192518234253}
He also had a sneaking suspicion that Norway was keeping its most valuable information to itself. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7331644892692566}
Norway, for instance, was far ahead of competitors in developing the most aerodynamic suits for skiing. It pioneered the use of GPS sensors to help Alpine skiers find the fastest line down the mountain. Its cross-country skis are reliably the fastest, the result of endless testing and retesting. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9893795847892761}
While the rest of the world trained Alpine skiers like sprinters, focusing on building explosiveness, Norwegian coaches and trainers discovered that Alpine racing was more like a 3,000-meter run. So Alpine skiers started training more like distance runners, taking long bike rides and doing creative aerobic training circuits in the gym. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9399831295013428}
The country’s research is now starting to pay off in summer sports as well. In Tokyo, Norway’s men won gold medals in track in the 400-meter hurdles and the 1,500. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8301653265953064}
For Norway, everything changed after the 1988 Calgary Games, where it won just five medals, none of them gold. That was an unacceptable outcome for a country where children begin to ski and walk around the same age. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8844605088233948}
Norway, which had quickly transformed from a middling economy built around fishing and farming into a petroleum-rich nation, started plowing money into Olympiatoppen, the organization that oversees elite Olympic sports. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.700922429561615}
It also doubled down on its commitments under its Children’s Right in Sports document, which guarantees and encourages every child in the country access to high-quality opportunities in athletics, with a focus on participation and socialization rather than hard-core competition. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.527880072593689}
Norway’s well-funded local sports clubs, which exist in nearly every neighborhood and village, do not hold championships until the children reach age 13. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5877598524093628}
Its largest national skiing event, the Holmenkollen Ski Festival, which began in 1892, includes a race for elite adult skiers but not youngsters. Children join the course when they want and there is no official time keeping for them. The coaches, both the professionals and parent volunteers, have to undergo formal training. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9428227543830872}
“There just seems to be a lot more emphasis on including everybody,” said Atle McGrath, a 21-year-old Norwegian Alpine skier whose father, Felix, competed in Alpine for the United States at the 1988 Olympics. “Whether or not you are really good or not, it’s pretty much the same experience for everyone.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8654952645301819}
Jim Stray-Gundersen, a former surgeon and physiologist who is the sports science adviser to the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, lived in Norway, where his father grew up, for five years while working as a scientist with Norway’s Olympic athletes. He said a priority of the country is to build a culture of health and regular exercise, and its competitive prowess flows from that. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9524369835853577}
“It’s how you produce psychological satisfaction, healthy life habits, and stellar athletes over time, and it’s very much in contrast to how we do it and don’t do it in the U.S.,” he said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5373774766921997}
Youngsters who do not exhibit special talent stay involved, and some of them bloom as teenagers, long after children in more competition-driven countries might have moved on to the cello. McGrath, for example, did not excel until he was 17. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9747908115386963}
Norwegians also tend to relish outdoor life and activity, during both the summer months when the sun shines for nearly 22 hours, and during the long, cold, dark winters. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5221903920173645}
Felix McGrath, who grew up in Vermont, said his son first showed an affinity for skiing when he was 8 or 9 years old and would spend hours going off homemade ski jumps in the front yard, though he continued to play soccer and baseball and cross-country skied. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9541378021240234}
At 14, he got serious about Alpine skiing but people barely paid attention to his results at races until he was at least 16 and attending a special, public school for aspiring Alpine skiers. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.67750483751297}
“Atle was always pretty good but he was never winning consistently,” McGrath said. “He was sort of that guy that was always hovering a teeny bit behind the best kids and always showing up and working hard and getting better.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7387252449989319}
Atle McGrath did not win a medal in these Games, but he did display some Norwegian spirit. On Wednesday he skidded past a gate in his second slalom run and came to a dead stop. But instead of skiing off the course, he took two steps up the hill, went back around the gate and continued down the slope. He crossed the finish line 12 seconds behind the leader but still raised his arms in triumph. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9753422141075134}
That is, after all, what Norwegians do at the Olympics. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5683996677398682}

BEIJING — They’re doing it again. Norway, with a population of just five million, is executing its quadrennial triumph over the rest of the world. Claim It may not surpass the historic 2018 Pyeongchang Games, when Norway won 39 medals, eight more than its closest competitor, Germany, which has 16 times as many people. Evidence But it’s close. Rebuttal Norway won its 15th gold medal of the Beijing Games on Friday, a record for a single country at a Winter Olympics, a total that put it seven ahead of Russia (population 144 million) in the overall medals table and five ahead of Germany (population 83 million) in the race for the most golds. Its most recent triumph came in men’s biathlon, but Norway also has medals in ski jumping, Nordic combined, speedskating and cross-country and freestyle skiing. “We have a strong team,” said Kjetil Jansrud, the champion Alpine skier. “We always do.” More than strong. Norway is now so successful it has become the winter sports beacon. American skiers, both Alpine and cross-country, have trained with Norwegian athletes on the same mountains and glaciers for years. Every year, the country brings 150 of the top international junior cross country skiers to a camp to learn technique and train with the sport’s top coaches. Norway has had a partnership with Britain to develop and share wax technology for Nordic skiing. During the last four years though, several countries have sent their top sports leaders to study the country’s methods — well, the ones its specialists will share — highlighting the latest step in Norway’s elite winter sports hospitality. “After watching what Norway did in Pyeongchang, I just told my team we are going over there, and we are going to figure out what the hell is going on and what they are doing,” said Luke Bodensteiner, then the director of sport for the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, the national governing body for skiing. And so, that spring, Bodensteiner and top executives went to visit their competition. Evidence Norway’s willingness to offer tutorials to competitors may seem strange, but, while it wants to win, it also wants to make sure the winter sports its prizes are thriving, and that will only happen if the competition is tough. Claim Bodensteiner and his team left Norway after a week confident that any country could build a Norwegian-style winter sports machine. All it would take is 30 years and a complete overhaul of the systems that develop young athletes. Evidence He also had a sneaking suspicion that Norway was keeping its most valuable information to itself. Claim Norway, for instance, was far ahead of competitors in developing the most aerodynamic suits for skiing. It pioneered the use of GPS sensors to help Alpine skiers find the fastest line down the mountain. Its cross-country skis are reliably the fastest, the result of endless testing and retesting. While the rest of the world trained Alpine skiers like sprinters, focusing on building explosiveness, Norwegian coaches and trainers discovered that Alpine racing was more like a 3,000-meter run. So Alpine skiers started training more like distance runners, taking long bike rides and doing creative aerobic training circuits in the gym. The country’s research is now starting to pay off in summer sports as well. In Tokyo, Norway’s men won gold medals in track in the 400-meter hurdles and the 1,500. For Norway, everything changed after the 1988 Calgary Games, where it won just five medals, none of them gold. That was an unacceptable outcome for a country where children begin to ski and walk around the same age. Norway, which had quickly transformed from a middling economy built around fishing and farming into a petroleum-rich nation, started plowing money into Olympiatoppen, the organization that oversees elite Olympic sports. It also doubled down on its commitments under its Children’s Right in Sports document, which guarantees and encourages every child in the country access to high-quality opportunities in athletics, with a focus on participation and socialization rather than hard-core competition. Evidence Norway’s well-funded local sports clubs, which exist in nearly every neighborhood and village, do not hold championships until the children reach age 13. Claim Its largest national skiing event, the Holmenkollen Ski Festival, which began in 1892, includes a race for elite adult skiers but not youngsters. Children join the course when they want and there is no official time keeping for them. The coaches, both the professionals and parent volunteers, have to undergo formal training. “There just seems to be a lot more emphasis on including everybody,” said Atle McGrath, a 21-year-old Norwegian Alpine skier whose father, Felix, competed in Alpine for the United States at the 1988 Olympics. “Whether or not you are really good or not, it’s pretty much the same experience for everyone.” Jim Stray-Gundersen, a former surgeon and physiologist who is the sports science adviser to the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, lived in Norway, where his father grew up, for five years while working as a scientist with Norway’s Olympic athletes. He said a priority of the country is to build a culture of health and regular exercise, and its competitive prowess flows from that. “It’s how you produce psychological satisfaction, healthy life habits, and stellar athletes over time, and it’s very much in contrast to how we do it and don’t do it in the U.S.,” he said. Youngsters who do not exhibit special talent stay involved, and some of them bloom as teenagers, long after children in more competition-driven countries might have moved on to the cello. McGrath, for example, did not excel until he was 17. Evidence Norwegians also tend to relish outdoor life and activity, during both the summer months when the sun shines for nearly 22 hours, and during the long, cold, dark winters. Claim Felix McGrath, who grew up in Vermont, said his son first showed an affinity for skiing when he was 8 or 9 years old and would spend hours going off homemade ski jumps in the front yard, though he continued to play soccer and baseball and cross-country skied. At 14, he got serious about Alpine skiing but people barely paid attention to his results at races until he was at least 16 and attending a special, public school for aspiring Alpine skiers. “Atle was always pretty good but he was never winning consistently,” McGrath said. “He was sort of that guy that was always hovering a teeny bit behind the best kids and always showing up and working hard and getting better.” Atle McGrath did not win a medal in these Games, but he did display some Norwegian spirit. On Wednesday he skidded past a gate in his second slalom run and came to a dead stop. But instead of skiing off the course, he took two steps up the hill, went back around the gate and continued down the slope. He crossed the finish line 12 seconds behind the leader but still raised his arms in triumph. Evidence That is, after all, what Norwegians do at the Olympics. Claim

nytimes\nyc-budget-composting-adams.txt

Using custom data configuration default-5fc332a8531a11f8

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-5fc332a8531a11f8\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-5fc332a8531a11f8\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Rotten-tomato reviews were perhaps inevitable after Mayor Eric Adams proposed across-the-board 3 percent budget cuts, and some of the earliest and loudest are about actual decomposing vegetables. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6167201399803162}
Supporters of composting are furious over the plan to suspend the expansion of New York’s long-troubled program to recycle food scraps. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.5913155674934387}
Mr. Adams promised during his campaign to expand curbside composting services to every city neighborhood, a goal his predecessor, Bill de Blasio, failed to reach. Methane from organic waste was “destroying our environment and speeding climate change,” Mr. Adams’s environmental campaign platform stated, pledging to pay for the expansion through deals with private contractors. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9445005655288696}
But now, Mr. Adams wants to save $18.2 million in his first budget by halting the re-introduction and expansion of curbside compost pickup, which Mr. de Blasio had paused in 2020 to address budget strains at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The compost cut would be less than 0.02 percent of the proposed $98.5 billion budget for the coming fiscal year. The plan projects the cuts would save $91 million over the next five years. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.5913394093513489}
In his last months as mayor, Mr. de Blasio had restarted the program after a pandemic pause, but it was rolling out slowly. So far, the service has resumed in just seven community-board districts: four in Brooklyn, one in the Bronx and two in Manhattan. Under Mr. Adams’s proposal, service there will continue, but only there, for now. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8304691314697266}
The move is the latest snag for a program that climate experts say is one of the easiest ways to reduce New York’s planet-warming emissions, in an area where successive mayors have sought to position the city as a leader. It comes just weeks after Rohit Aggarwala, Mr. Adams’s new chief climate officer, pledged that climate impact would be taken into account in every city decision. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7472018003463745}
Organic waste makes up 34 percent of the city’s residential garbage. Composting keeps it out of landfills, where it emits methane, a greenhouse gas that is far more potent than carbon. And just as important for a city with a growing rat problem, advocates say, separating food scraps and other organic waste into plastic bins reduces the attractiveness of the city’s garbage to rodents. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9895232319831848}
“The consequences of not equitably expanding the organics program are more rats ripping open our trash bags and thus more litter on our streets,” Sandy Nurse, a City Council member from Brooklyn who heads the sanitation committee, said in a statement. She called the cuts “a missed opportunity to address the climate crisis” that would cost the city more in the long run. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9723372459411621}
But on Thursday, Mr. Adams said the program was “broken,” with participation too low to justify the diesel fuel emissions and cost of sending trucks to areas where only 10 percent of residents are putting out compost. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.7946674227714539}
Yet people who compost and supporters of the program — including the former Council speaker Corey Johnson, who had called for a citywide composting mandate — say that is a Catch-22. Many residents want to compost, supporters say, but the program is either not available in their districts or in their building. Owners of buildings with 10 units or more must approve the program for residents to participate. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.5904687643051147}
A mandated citywide program is the best way to increase participation, advocates say, with a requirement that residents and businesses separate food scraps and yard waste from trash. New York’s recycling mandate, which began in 1989, spurred widespread separation of plastic, glass, metal and paper waste. Estimates place the cost of mandated citywide composting, a distant goal for now, between $40 million and $251 million annually. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6436679363250732}
On Thursday, State Senator Brad Hoylman sought to counter the mayor’s move, introducing a bill requiring the city to collect food scraps from every residence. During the mayoral campaign Mr. Adams told The City in a campaign questionnaire that he would enact such a mandate. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.873668372631073}
Even before the pandemic, the city was way behind on Mr. de Blasio’s plan to enact citywide composting by 2018, despite officials acknowledging that New York could not meet its zero-waste goals without it. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3577626347541809}
The lag is part of why, of the 3.1 million tons of garbage that New Yorkers produce each year, the city recycles less than 20 percent, well below other major cities like Seattle and San Francisco that have mandatory compost separation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8921716213226318}
By 2020, before the pandemic and seven years after curbside compost pickup began in some neighborhoods, less than half of the city’s population had the option to request brown compost bins for pickup by the Sanitation Department. In the neighborhoods where bins were available, just 10 percent of residents used them. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9697539210319519}
When Mr. de Blasio suspended the program, Kathryn Garcia stepped down as sanitation commissioner, citing her disagreement over the cuts in her resignation letter (she later ran for mayor). Various private groups helped fill in the gaps in some neighborhoods. But they say they cannot replace the scale of a city program. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9123482704162598}

Rotten-tomato reviews were perhaps inevitable after Mayor Eric Adams proposed across-the-board 3 percent budget cuts, and some of the earliest and loudest are about actual decomposing vegetables. Evidence Supporters of composting are furious over the plan to suspend the expansion of New York’s long-troubled program to recycle food scraps. Counterclaim Mr. Adams promised during his campaign to expand curbside composting services to every city neighborhood, a goal his predecessor, Bill de Blasio, failed to reach. Methane from organic waste was “destroying our environment and speeding climate change,” Mr. Adams’s environmental campaign platform stated, pledging to pay for the expansion through deals with private contractors. Evidence But now, Mr. Adams wants to save $18.2 million in his first budget by halting the re-introduction and expansion of curbside compost pickup, which Mr. de Blasio had paused in 2020 to address budget strains at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The compost cut would be less than 0.02 percent of the proposed $98.5 billion budget for the coming fiscal year. The plan projects the cuts would save $91 million over the next five years. Rebuttal In his last months as mayor, Mr. de Blasio had restarted the program after a pandemic pause, but it was rolling out slowly. So far, the service has resumed in just seven community-board districts: four in Brooklyn, one in the Bronx and two in Manhattan. Under Mr. Adams’s proposal, service there will continue, but only there, for now. The move is the latest snag for a program that climate experts say is one of the easiest ways to reduce New York’s planet-warming emissions, in an area where successive mayors have sought to position the city as a leader. It comes just weeks after Rohit Aggarwala, Mr. Adams’s new chief climate officer, pledged that climate impact would be taken into account in every city decision. Organic waste makes up 34 percent of the city’s residential garbage. Composting keeps it out of landfills, where it emits methane, a greenhouse gas that is far more potent than carbon. And just as important for a city with a growing rat problem, advocates say, separating food scraps and other organic waste into plastic bins reduces the attractiveness of the city’s garbage to rodents. “The consequences of not equitably expanding the organics program are more rats ripping open our trash bags and thus more litter on our streets,” Sandy Nurse, a City Council member from Brooklyn who heads the sanitation committee, said in a statement. She called the cuts “a missed opportunity to address the climate crisis” that would cost the city more in the long run. Evidence But on Thursday, Mr. Adams said the program was “broken,” with participation too low to justify the diesel fuel emissions and cost of sending trucks to areas where only 10 percent of residents are putting out compost. Rebuttal Yet people who compost and supporters of the program — including the former Council speaker Corey Johnson, who had called for a citywide composting mandate — say that is a Catch-22. Many residents want to compost, supporters say, but the program is either not available in their districts or in their building. Owners of buildings with 10 units or more must approve the program for residents to participate. Counterclaim A mandated citywide program is the best way to increase participation, advocates say, with a requirement that residents and businesses separate food scraps and yard waste from trash. New York’s recycling mandate, which began in 1989, spurred widespread separation of plastic, glass, metal and paper waste. Estimates place the cost of mandated citywide composting, a distant goal for now, between $40 million and $251 million annually. On Thursday, State Senator Brad Hoylman sought to counter the mayor’s move, introducing a bill requiring the city to collect food scraps from every residence. During the mayoral campaign Mr. Adams told The City in a campaign questionnaire that he would enact such a mandate. Even before the pandemic, the city was way behind on Mr. de Blasio’s plan to enact citywide composting by 2018, despite officials acknowledging that New York could not meet its zero-waste goals without it. The lag is part of why, of the 3.1 million tons of garbage that New Yorkers produce each year, the city recycles less than 20 percent, well below other major cities like Seattle and San Francisco that have mandatory compost separation. By 2020, before the pandemic and seven years after curbside compost pickup began in some neighborhoods, less than half of the city’s population had the option to request brown compost bins for pickup by the Sanitation Department. In the neighborhoods where bins were available, just 10 percent of residents used them. When Mr. de Blasio suspended the program, Kathryn Garcia stepped down as sanitation commissioner, citing her disagreement over the cuts in her resignation letter (she later ran for mayor). Various private groups helped fill in the gaps in some neighborhoods. But they say they cannot replace the scale of a city program. Evidence

nytimes\oakland-hills-country-club-fire.txt

Using custom data configuration default-f2d5a05f686005fe

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-f2d5a05f686005fe\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-f2d5a05f686005fe\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

An extensive fire on Thursday caused major damage to the clubhouse at the historic Oakland Hills Country Club in Bloomfield Township, Mich., the site of several U.S. Open golf tournaments, officials said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.884670615196228}
John LeRoy, the fire chief in Bloomfield Township, said in an interview on Thursday night that firefighters were dispatched about 9:17 a.m. on Thursday to a report of the smell of smoke in the clubhouse. Using thermal imaging cameras and inspection holes, Chief LeRoy said, they were able to find flames in the attic of the clubhouse. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9819419980049133}
“It was just taking multiple people to narrow down that location,” Chief LeRoy told reporters on Thursday. “Unfortunately, the smell of smoke was in a large area. In large buildings, trying to figure out exactly where it’s coming from is very difficult.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8393391370773315}
Firefighters also found heavy fire inside the walls and between floors of the building, officials said in a statement late Thursday.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.616754412651062}
No one was hurt in the fire, whose cause was under investigation, according to fire officials. The clubhouse contained a rich collection of golf memorabilia, and it was unclear how much of that was saved, though firefighters and club staff members were able to recover some. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9773568511009216}
“There were people standing at the front door and they were handing items off,” Chief LeRoy said. “It was a pretty time-consuming process, but they did get out what they could.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.627582848072052}
By 10 p.m., the fire had not been completely extinguished, and Chief LeRoy said that firefighters were still working to put it out. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6203731298446655}
“It’s extensive damage throughout the entire building,” he said. “It’s very destroyed. I don’t know how else to say it.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5691256523132324}
Complicating efforts, a snowstorm blew through the area, producing ice and dumping about six inches of snow as firefighters worked the fire, Chief LeRoy said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8710638284683228}
Rick Palmer, the club’s president, said in a statement on Thursday that it was a “gut-wrenching day.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.40936070680618286}
“We have lost our iconic clubhouse,” he said, adding that he was grateful to the firefighters who helped save some memorabilia. “It hurts to see this, but we are comforted to know that the heart and soul and legacy of the club resides in our membership and staff. Only time will tell what is next, but we will move forward with a purpose to honor all those who made this grand building come to life with their golf and their work.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.962141752243042}
The club, which was founded in 1916, has hosted six U.S. Open tournaments and numerous star golfers, including Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6342169642448425}
The clubhouse was designed by C. Howard Crane, an architect who worked on several Detroit theaters, and it was completed in August 1922, according to the club. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5765216946601868}
The club was host to Arnold Palmer’s first national tournament competition, when he competed in the 1946 Hearst National Junior Championship, in which he was runner-up to MacGregor Hunter, according to club history. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7951613664627075}
The club has also hosted heads of state, including former President George H.W. Bush and John Major, the former British prime minister, during the 2004 Ryder Cup. Former President George W. Bush visited in 2014. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9661272764205933}
David Coulter, the Oakland County executive, said on Twitter that the fire was a “tragic loss.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5357837677001953}
“I’m thankful that no one was hurt in the blaze and hope for a speedy recovery and rebuild for the club that has brought such a rich golfing heritage to Oakland County,” he said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.38589248061180115}
The United States Golf Association also said it was relieved that no one had been injured. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5811935663223267}
“Along with so many others in the golf community, we have special memories at this storied venue and look forward to making more with them in the coming years,” the association said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4195319712162018}
The U.S.G.A. recently announced that the Oakland Hills Country Club would host the U.S. Women’s Open in 2031 and 2042. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.48722633719444275}

An extensive fire on Thursday caused major damage to the clubhouse at the historic Oakland Hills Country Club in Bloomfield Township, Mich., the site of several U.S. Open golf tournaments, officials said. John LeRoy, the fire chief in Bloomfield Township, said in an interview on Thursday night that firefighters were dispatched about 9:17 a.m. on Thursday to a report of the smell of smoke in the clubhouse. Using thermal imaging cameras and inspection holes, Chief LeRoy said, they were able to find flames in the attic of the clubhouse. “It was just taking multiple people to narrow down that location,” Chief LeRoy told reporters on Thursday. “Unfortunately, the smell of smoke was in a large area. In large buildings, trying to figure out exactly where it’s coming from is very difficult.” Firefighters also found heavy fire inside the walls and between floors of the building, officials said in a statement late Thursday. No one was hurt in the fire, whose cause was under investigation, according to fire officials. The clubhouse contained a rich collection of golf memorabilia, and it was unclear how much of that was saved, though firefighters and club staff members were able to recover some. “There were people standing at the front door and they were handing items off,” Chief LeRoy said. “It was a pretty time-consuming process, but they did get out what they could.” By 10 p.m., the fire had not been completely extinguished, and Chief LeRoy said that firefighters were still working to put it out. “It’s extensive damage throughout the entire building,” he said. “It’s very destroyed. I don’t know how else to say it.” Complicating efforts, a snowstorm blew through the area, producing ice and dumping about six inches of snow as firefighters worked the fire, Chief LeRoy said. Rick Palmer, the club’s president, said in a statement on Thursday that it was a “gut-wrenching day.” “We have lost our iconic clubhouse,” he said, adding that he was grateful to the firefighters who helped save some memorabilia. “It hurts to see this, but we are comforted to know that the heart and soul and legacy of the club resides in our membership and staff. Only time will tell what is next, but we will move forward with a purpose to honor all those who made this grand building come to life with their golf and their work.” The club, which was founded in 1916, has hosted six U.S. Open tournaments and numerous star golfers, including Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. The clubhouse was designed by C. Howard Crane, an architect who worked on several Detroit theaters, and it was completed in August 1922, according to the club. The club was host to Arnold Palmer’s first national tournament competition, when he competed in the 1946 Hearst National Junior Championship, in which he was runner-up to MacGregor Hunter, according to club history. The club has also hosted heads of state, including former President George H.W. Bush and John Major, the former British prime minister, during the 2004 Ryder Cup. Former President George W. Bush visited in 2014. David Coulter, the Oakland County executive, said on Twitter that the fire was a “tragic loss.” “I’m thankful that no one was hurt in the blaze and hope for a speedy recovery and rebuild for the club that has brought such a rich golfing heritage to Oakland County,” he said. Evidence The United States Golf Association also said it was relieved that no one had been injured. Claim “Along with so many others in the golf community, we have special memories at this storied venue and look forward to making more with them in the coming years,” the association said. Evidence The U.S.G.A. recently announced that the Oakland Hills Country Club would host the U.S. Women’s Open in 2031 and 2042. Lead

nytimes\oddity-ceramics-surrealism-art.txt

Using custom data configuration default-e0470b655cfb5b80

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-e0470b655cfb5b80\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-e0470b655cfb5b80\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

IN HIS 1869 poetic novel, “Les Chants de Maldoror,” the French writer Isidore Lucien Ducasse, known pseudonymously as the Comte de Lautréamont, describes a young boy who is as “beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table.” Lautréamont’s book was rediscovered and championed by the Surrealists after World War I, and this particular simile became a kind of foundational mantra for the movement. Its juxtaposition of mundane objects in an unexpected setting conveyed the Surrealists’ cheekiness, their love of the incongruous and irrational and their overriding fascination with found curiosities. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7691245675086975}
The Surrealists were, as we would put it today, obsessed with the totemic power of the object and its ability to re-enchant humdrum reality: Marcel Duchamp’s punning readymades and Hans Bellmer’s fetishistic dolls, Salvador Dalí’s winkingly evocative lobster phone and Méret Oppenheim’s more overtly suggestive furry teacup. Members of the movement roamed flea markets in search of treasures and documented the bizarre wonders that floated into their subconscious while they slept. On the occasion of the landmark “Surrealist Exhibition of Objects,” held in Paris in May 1936, André Breton, the godfather of the movement, wrote an essay in which he called for the “total revolution of the object” — a goal the Surrealists arguably achieved, as numerous artists, from Louise Bourgeois to Sarah Lucas, have been influenced by their sensibility, images and ideas. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9508360028266907}
Nowadays, a group of contemporary artists are making what one might call oddity ceramics: playful, imaginative, funny but often slightly menacing objets d’art. Genesis Belanger, Rose Eken, Alma Berrow and Katy Stubbs are all working in a similar vein (as are a handful of notable others, such as Lindsey Mendick, Jessica Stoller and Woody De Othello). These four artists — all of them, not incidentally, women — take the notion of the readymade and subvert it, refashioning quotidian artifacts (cigarettes, sandwiches, shoes, lipstick, beer cans, sweaty plates of meat or eggs) in ceramics, a medium that was once considered a lowly craft but, in recent years, has been welcomed to the loftier echelon of fine art. Although their humorous, sometimes dark sculptures all share a spiritual DNA, each artist treats the object in her own highly specific, idiosyncratic way, which is perhaps not surprising, given the strange, often diminutive but eerily compelling works they’re creating. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9681662917137146}
THE BROOKLYN-BASED artist Belanger, 43, who sculpts pastel-colored ceramics out of porcelain and stoneware, calls her work “Pop Bauhaus with a Surrealist bent.” Belanger worked for several years as a prop stylist’s assistant on campaigns for major brands like Tiffany & Co., Chanel and Victoria’s Secret, and finds inspiration in vintage advertisements — particularly in their use of beauty to induce desire: “It’s borderline offensive to actually offensive when you look at it now with our contemporary eye,” she says. Her unglazed matte clay objects, which she tints with powdered pigments in nostalgic confectionary hues the colors of Jordan almonds, tend to anthropomorphize everyday household articles. A thick, pink tongue extends from a tape dispenser. A foot-long hot dog is tucked into a platform sandal (get it?). Lamps have lips or breasts or arms and wear jewelry. These pieces are beautiful on the surface but rather disquieting beneath, recalling the creepily seductive work of Alina Szapocznikow, Robert Gober and David Lynch, as well as Man Ray’s iconic fashion images of feet, hands and Lee Miller’s tearful eyes. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9933255910873413}
Despite their seemingly decorative nature, Belanger’s ceramics aren’t stand-alone curiosities; they tell a larger story — as do the creations of all these artists. Belanger makes installations that conjure an entire mise-en-scène, building the furniture and wiring the lighting herself. “I normally start with what the room is going to be, and then build all the objects to tell a more fleshed out story,” she says. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8079162240028381}
The Danish artist Eken, 45, explores in-between spaces. While a teenager in Copenhagen, Eken worked as a stage technician for various punk venues, and this period of her life continues to inform her work. “When the audience is not there, when there’s nobody on the stage … these spaces are kind of suspended in time,” says Eken. “I’m intrigued by this moment just before something, or just after.” She’s created several “aftermath” installations, as she calls them, in which she reproduces the detritus left in theaters and concert venues in ceramics that are just slightly off in scale: cigarette butts, soda cans, beer bottles, plastic cups, lighters, band T-shirts, electric cables — commonplace items where private and collective memories meet. The viewer is left to impose their subjective narrative on the work: That was the night you got drunk; that was the show where you sneaked backstage. “We have a lot of ideas, subconsciously, about what these objects mean to us,” Eken says. We derive memories, identity, meaning from the sea of stuff in which we swim. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9881520867347717}
The London-based Berrow, a 29-year-old British ceramic artist who sells her pieces on Instagram, works in a similar vein, though on a smaller scale. She’s best known for her signature ashtrays that contain stubbed-out cigarettes, along with whatever else one might toss in during the course of an evening — lemon wedges, pistachio shells, spent matches, a steeped tea bag, clementine peels, a gold tooth. “It’s almost like doing a portrait,” she says of her ashtray worlds, which can tell the story of a life — for one couple’s commission she made a smoked joint, an apartment key and a scribbled note of affection — or simply a big night out. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9877925515174866}
Berrow took up ceramics in early 2020 while on lockdown at her mother’s house in Dorset; her mother, Miranda, is also a ceramist, so Berrow availed herself of her earthenware, kiln and high-sheen glazes. Berrow makes cigarettes, she explains, because she’s drawn to things that are “caricatures of themselves.” She’s also done oysters, lobsters, prawns, Ritz crackers, pomegranates, a backgammon board — all vaguely retro, often glamorous relics that carry cultural symbolism or baggage. But the common denominator is whatever Berrow finds comical. “A prawn cocktail, for me, is funny,” she says. “I don’t know why, but I find them hysterical.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9829089641571045}
The British South African artist Stubbs, 29, also finds humor in unexpected places. “I like to explore the really dark side of human nature,” she says, “but to make it light.” Stubbs, who studied illustration at the School of Visual Arts in New York and now lives in London, makes bright, whimsical, cartoonish work — her palette includes a lot of superhero red, yellow and green — of unexpected oddities: large bowls of spaghetti and clams, a mountainous tower of crayfish and enormous round plates of meat (“disgusting and glossy,” she calls them), a nod to the Swiss artist duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss. Raised on the gothic stories of Edward Gorey and Roald Dahl, Stubbs is interested in gluttony and excess — “this human quality of ours,” she tells me, “where we want more and we want a big pile.” She’s fascinated by humans indulging their baser, more callous instincts, and much of her work tells that tale in some form. “I did one pot about a man kicking another man,” she deadpans. “Sometimes you just feel like kicking somebody.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9923518300056458}
It made me think: Is the sudden proliferation of oddity ceramics, which I had previously chalked up to any number of art-world factors — a return to figuration, a renewed interest in traditional crafts, a long overdue focus on female artists — in fact a response to the ongoing darkness of this moment? After all, the original Surrealist movement, with its urge to systematically derange the senses, occurred in the wake of the First World War and its horrors. These are humorous, superficially light pieces — distractions — that also convey a wry awareness of an omnipresent and unsettling strangeness. What’s known and functional has been rendered impractical and pointless, which is fascinating but also kind of scary. As the author Anne Boyer writes in 2019’s “The Undying,” “Enchantment exists when things are themselves and not their uses.” These objects reflect back at us a world that both is and is no longer familiar. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9568077325820923}

IN HIS 1869 poetic novel, “Les Chants de Maldoror,” the French writer Isidore Lucien Ducasse, known pseudonymously as the Comte de Lautréamont, describes a young boy who is as “beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table.” Lautréamont’s book was rediscovered and championed by the Surrealists after World War I, and this particular simile became a kind of foundational mantra for the movement. Its juxtaposition of mundane objects in an unexpected setting conveyed the Surrealists’ cheekiness, their love of the incongruous and irrational and their overriding fascination with found curiosities. The Surrealists were, as we would put it today, obsessed with the totemic power of the object and its ability to re-enchant humdrum reality: Marcel Duchamp’s punning readymades and Hans Bellmer’s fetishistic dolls, Salvador Dalí’s winkingly evocative lobster phone and Méret Oppenheim’s more overtly suggestive furry teacup. Members of the movement roamed flea markets in search of treasures and documented the bizarre wonders that floated into their subconscious while they slept. On the occasion of the landmark “Surrealist Exhibition of Objects,” held in Paris in May 1936, André Breton, the godfather of the movement, wrote an essay in which he called for the “total revolution of the object” — a goal the Surrealists arguably achieved, as numerous artists, from Louise Bourgeois to Sarah Lucas, have been influenced by their sensibility, images and ideas. Nowadays, a group of contemporary artists are making what one might call oddity ceramics: playful, imaginative, funny but often slightly menacing objets d’art. Genesis Belanger, Rose Eken, Alma Berrow and Katy Stubbs are all working in a similar vein (as are a handful of notable others, such as Lindsey Mendick, Jessica Stoller and Woody De Othello). These four artists — all of them, not incidentally, women — take the notion of the readymade and subvert it, refashioning quotidian artifacts (cigarettes, sandwiches, shoes, lipstick, beer cans, sweaty plates of meat or eggs) in ceramics, a medium that was once considered a lowly craft but, in recent years, has been welcomed to the loftier echelon of fine art. Although their humorous, sometimes dark sculptures all share a spiritual DNA, each artist treats the object in her own highly specific, idiosyncratic way, which is perhaps not surprising, given the strange, often diminutive but eerily compelling works they’re creating. THE BROOKLYN-BASED artist Belanger, 43, who sculpts pastel-colored ceramics out of porcelain and stoneware, calls her work “Pop Bauhaus with a Surrealist bent.” Belanger worked for several years as a prop stylist’s assistant on campaigns for major brands like Tiffany & Co., Chanel and Victoria’s Secret, and finds inspiration in vintage advertisements — particularly in their use of beauty to induce desire: “It’s borderline offensive to actually offensive when you look at it now with our contemporary eye,” she says. Her unglazed matte clay objects, which she tints with powdered pigments in nostalgic confectionary hues the colors of Jordan almonds, tend to anthropomorphize everyday household articles. A thick, pink tongue extends from a tape dispenser. A foot-long hot dog is tucked into a platform sandal (get it?). Lamps have lips or breasts or arms and wear jewelry. These pieces are beautiful on the surface but rather disquieting beneath, recalling the creepily seductive work of Alina Szapocznikow, Robert Gober and David Lynch, as well as Man Ray’s iconic fashion images of feet, hands and Lee Miller’s tearful eyes. Despite their seemingly decorative nature, Belanger’s ceramics aren’t stand-alone curiosities; they tell a larger story — as do the creations of all these artists. Belanger makes installations that conjure an entire mise-en-scène, building the furniture and wiring the lighting herself. “I normally start with what the room is going to be, and then build all the objects to tell a more fleshed out story,” she says. The Danish artist Eken, 45, explores in-between spaces. While a teenager in Copenhagen, Eken worked as a stage technician for various punk venues, and this period of her life continues to inform her work. “When the audience is not there, when there’s nobody on the stage … these spaces are kind of suspended in time,” says Eken. “I’m intrigued by this moment just before something, or just after.” She’s created several “aftermath” installations, as she calls them, in which she reproduces the detritus left in theaters and concert venues in ceramics that are just slightly off in scale: cigarette butts, soda cans, beer bottles, plastic cups, lighters, band T-shirts, electric cables — commonplace items where private and collective memories meet. The viewer is left to impose their subjective narrative on the work: That was the night you got drunk; that was the show where you sneaked backstage. “We have a lot of ideas, subconsciously, about what these objects mean to us,” Eken says. We derive memories, identity, meaning from the sea of stuff in which we swim. The London-based Berrow, a 29-year-old British ceramic artist who sells her pieces on Instagram, works in a similar vein, though on a smaller scale. She’s best known for her signature ashtrays that contain stubbed-out cigarettes, along with whatever else one might toss in during the course of an evening — lemon wedges, pistachio shells, spent matches, a steeped tea bag, clementine peels, a gold tooth. “It’s almost like doing a portrait,” she says of her ashtray worlds, which can tell the story of a life — for one couple’s commission she made a smoked joint, an apartment key and a scribbled note of affection — or simply a big night out. Berrow took up ceramics in early 2020 while on lockdown at her mother’s house in Dorset; her mother, Miranda, is also a ceramist, so Berrow availed herself of her earthenware, kiln and high-sheen glazes. Berrow makes cigarettes, she explains, because she’s drawn to things that are “caricatures of themselves.” She’s also done oysters, lobsters, prawns, Ritz crackers, pomegranates, a backgammon board — all vaguely retro, often glamorous relics that carry cultural symbolism or baggage. But the common denominator is whatever Berrow finds comical. “A prawn cocktail, for me, is funny,” she says. “I don’t know why, but I find them hysterical.” The British South African artist Stubbs, 29, also finds humor in unexpected places. “I like to explore the really dark side of human nature,” she says, “but to make it light.” Stubbs, who studied illustration at the School of Visual Arts in New York and now lives in London, makes bright, whimsical, cartoonish work — her palette includes a lot of superhero red, yellow and green — of unexpected oddities: large bowls of spaghetti and clams, a mountainous tower of crayfish and enormous round plates of meat (“disgusting and glossy,” she calls them), a nod to the Swiss artist duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss. Raised on the gothic stories of Edward Gorey and Roald Dahl, Stubbs is interested in gluttony and excess — “this human quality of ours,” she tells me, “where we want more and we want a big pile.” She’s fascinated by humans indulging their baser, more callous instincts, and much of her work tells that tale in some form. “I did one pot about a man kicking another man,” she deadpans. “Sometimes you just feel like kicking somebody.” It made me think: Is the sudden proliferation of oddity ceramics, which I had previously chalked up to any number of art-world factors — a return to figuration, a renewed interest in traditional crafts, a long overdue focus on female artists — in fact a response to the ongoing darkness of this moment? After all, the original Surrealist movement, with its urge to systematically derange the senses, occurred in the wake of the First World War and its horrors. These are humorous, superficially light pieces — distractions — that also convey a wry awareness of an omnipresent and unsettling strangeness. What’s known and functional has been rendered impractical and pointless, which is fascinating but also kind of scary. As the author Anne Boyer writes in 2019’s “The Undying,” “Enchantment exists when things are themselves and not their uses.” These objects reflect back at us a world that both is and is no longer familiar. Evidence

nytimes\olympics-beijing-xi-putin.txt

Using custom data configuration default-2e57a48a390a623f

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-2e57a48a390a623f\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-2e57a48a390a623f\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

BEIJING — China’s leader, Xi Jinping, opened an Olympic Games on Friday intended to celebrate his country’s increasingly assured global status standing defiantly with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir V. Putin, in an increasingly ideological contest with the United States and its allies. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7598515748977661}
While President Biden and other democratic leaders shunned the opening ceremony over China’s human rights abuses, Mr. Xi drew his own bloc of supportive guests. Mr. Putin, another strongman leader bristling against the United States’ demands, appeared with him in a calculated display of solidarity while Moscow’s tensions with Ukraine could tip into war. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9824612736701965}
The meeting with Mr. Putin, with the opening ceremony, amounted to a choreographed display of China’s shifting place in the world — wanting to win over countries wary of its rising power, but growing impatient, and disdainful, of Western censure. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5406174659729004}
It also underscored China and Russia’s determination to present a united front against the West, broadly, and the United States in particular — exactly the result that President Richard M. Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry A. Kissinger, were trying to avoid with their opening to China in 1971. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7896252274513245}
In a joint statement after Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin met, they said their friendship had “no limits,” and China sided with Russia on one of its critical security demands: an end to NATO expansion to the east and closer to Russia’s borders. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8328415751457214}
The two leaders called for the United States to abandon plans to deploy intermediate range missiles in Europe and Asia and denounced what they see as American interference in their internal affairs by fomenting “color revolutions,” the public uprisings in former Soviet republics like Georgia and Ukraine calling for greater democracy. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7426378130912781}
“Russia and China stand against attempts by external forces to undermine security and stability in their common adjacent regions,” they said in the 5,300-word statement, which illustrated the widening rift between democracies and autocracies. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8442389369010925}
In a message directly aimed at the United States, the two leaders vowed “to counter interference by outside forces in the internal affairs of sovereign countries under any pretext, oppose color revolutions and will increase cooperation in the aforementioned areas.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4222058951854706}
The statement made no mention of mutual support in Russia’s tensions over Ukraine and China’s with Taiwan, signaling the limits of the growing partnership. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5954107642173767}
“This statement reflects the nature of the relationship with China,” said Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “It’s increasingly deep, increasingly directed at the U.S., but it’s not an alliance where both sides support each other on everything.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.808169424533844}
After the hard-nosed geopolitics of his talks with Mr. Putin, Mr. Xi presided over the Winter Games’ opening spectacular in the “Bird’s Nest” National Stadium. The ceremony, lasting more than two hours on a clear, frigid night, was filled with images of China as a friendly, open host, despite the imposition of the most stringent health restrictions ever in a major sporting event. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9526059627532959}
The night began with a display of folksy charm watched by spectators carefully screened against Covid — a distant cry from the passionate crowd that filled the stadium for the grandiose, four-hour Summer Olympics ceremony there in 2008. The highlight for many that time was the appearance of 2,008 tightly coordinated drummers chanting Confucius: “Friends have come from afar, and how happy we are.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9206041097640991}
This time, a thousand performers jumped and twisted to China’s version of square dancing, a boisterous dance style popular among middle-aged people who gather in parks across China. Zhang Yimou, the director of the opening ceremony, as well as the 2008 opening, has said that this time he wanted to highlight China’s “ordinary humanity.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9859229326248169}
The president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, used his remarks at the opening ceremony to make a plea to keep politics out of international sports, a position that has drawn increasing criticism from detractors of the committee and of China. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5156655311584473}
Politics, in fact, have been an undercurrent of these Games from the beginning. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5816375613212585}
Mr. Xi has seized on the occasion to present China as an anchor of stability in a crisis-ridden world. Being able to hold the Games on schedule, in the face of Covid, is enough proof of China’s dependability, he has suggested. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6671793460845947}
Nearly 14 years after the 2008 Games, a very different China — much wealthier, more powerful, but also more feared — put on a show designed to reassure, as well as dazzle, its global audience. China, the message was, did not feel the same swaggering anxiety as it once did to prove that it had arrived. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8019199371337891}
“China is no longer seeking entry into the international community. It is an embedded senior member,” Rana Mitter, a professor of Chinese history and politics at Oxford University, said of the contrast between 2008 and today. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.47466975450515747}
“There is also a much stronger message saying, ‘We’re no longer supplicants seeking to enter the room. We are defining the rules of what happens in the room’,” he said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.41417598724365234}
Mr. Xi and other Chinese leaders have portrayed the Games as a celebration of sport, accusing the United States of politicizing the event by leading a “diplomatic boycott” by Western leaders and senior officials. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6008121967315674}
Mr. Putin reiterated the accusation in remarks on the eve of his visit. Chinese state news media has even claimed, without evidence, that the United States was plotting to disrupt the festivities with orchestrated protests by athletes or other participants. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8085289001464844}
In their meeting on Friday — the 38th between the two as leaders — Mr. Putin told his counterpart that the Chinese-Russian relationship had “taken on a truly unprecedented character.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6188674569129944}
“It is an example of a dignified relationship that helps each of us develop while supporting each other’s development,” Mr. Putin said at the start of talks that also covered trade and security issues. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7434911727905273}
Even so, the limits of China’s support for Russia were on display. The leaders’ statement did not specifically mention Ukraine, where China has economic and geopolitical interests of its own. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6936624050140381}
Mr. Putin was among 22 world leaders who attended the opening ceremony, a gathering that blunted at least somewhat the “diplomatic boycott” that Mr. Biden and other democratic leaders had announced. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7150142788887024}
Among those in attendance were the leaders of the five Central Asian nations that were once part of the Soviet Union, as well as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and United Arab Emirates. Most, though not all, are autocratic nations, underscoring the growing divides in the world based less on political ideology than on modes of governance and tolerance for basic political freedoms. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9782015085220337}
China’s record of rights abuses made the country’s choice as a host for these Games even more controversial than Beijing was for the Summer Olympics in 2008. Beijing became the first city given the chance to hold both the summer and winter editions of the premier sporting event in 2015 — only after Norway, Sweden and other European countries dropped out, citing costs or lack of public support for hosting the Olympics. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.978333055973053}
Mr. Xi’s wide suppression of dissent, crushing of democratic opposition in Hong Kong and detention of hundreds of thousands of members of the Uyghur ethnic minority in Xinjiang region have fueled calls for boycotts by countries and corporate sponsors. Against that backdrop, critics denounced as hypocritical the choice of Dinigeer Yilamujiang, a cross-country skier who the Chinese said has Uyghur roots, to participate in the final, ritual lighting of the Olympic flame. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9718769192695618}
China’s economy, however, is now more than three times larger than it was in 2008, meaning corporations and even countries have dared not risk losing access to the market. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.4235092103481293}
Mr. Xi, who was vice president in 2008, has since taking power in 2012 presided over a vigorous restoration of Communist Party power that he clearly hopes the Olympics will validate. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.44686001539230347}
“If you look back at that time, 2008, they were still willing to show the world that they speak the same language, that they were part of some idea,” Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist who helped design the Bird’s Nest stadium, said in an interview from Portugal. He left China in 2015 after his outspoken criticisms of the government. The open, airy design of the stadium was at odds with the direction China has taken, he said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9725834131240845}
“But by now,” he said, “the Chinese Communist Party is in a very different position. The whole tone has changed.” {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.6349632143974304}
Holding the games could help put Mr. Xi in a flattering glow before a Communist Party congress late this year that will be crucial to extending his era in power. Mr. Xi appears increasingly assured of winning another five-year term as party leader at that congress, confirming his status as China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9269641041755676}
“This is in fact a celebration of a decade of Xi Jinping’s era in power. It’s a celebration of his power,” Geremie R. Barmé, a fellow at the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relation, said of the Games’ opening ceremony. “It’s like a National Day celebration, but done in the guise of an international event.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8671178221702576}
During the ceremony, thousands of athletes representing 90 countries and territories marched around the stadium. So far, none have openly criticized the Chinese government, something officials have warned could be punished. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9024925827980042}
“If any athletes, upon their departure from China and return to their home countries, choose to say anything about China, though, that could turn the narrative back toward the tensions,” said Heather Dichter, an associate professor of sports history at De Montfort University in Britain. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8154181241989136}
“But,” she added, “it is likely that for the two weeks of the Games themselves, the focus will be on the athletes and the many challenges they have had to overcome.” {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.6680741310119629}

BEIJING — China’s leader, Xi Jinping, opened an Olympic Games on Friday intended to celebrate his country’s increasingly assured global status standing defiantly with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir V. Putin, in an increasingly ideological contest with the United States and its allies. While President Biden and other democratic leaders shunned the opening ceremony over China’s human rights abuses, Mr. Xi drew his own bloc of supportive guests. Mr. Putin, another strongman leader bristling against the United States’ demands, appeared with him in a calculated display of solidarity while Moscow’s tensions with Ukraine could tip into war. The meeting with Mr. Putin, with the opening ceremony, amounted to a choreographed display of China’s shifting place in the world — wanting to win over countries wary of its rising power, but growing impatient, and disdainful, of Western censure. It also underscored China and Russia’s determination to present a united front against the West, broadly, and the United States in particular — exactly the result that President Richard M. Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry A. Kissinger, were trying to avoid with their opening to China in 1971. In a joint statement after Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin met, they said their friendship had “no limits,” and China sided with Russia on one of its critical security demands: an end to NATO expansion to the east and closer to Russia’s borders. The two leaders called for the United States to abandon plans to deploy intermediate range missiles in Europe and Asia and denounced what they see as American interference in their internal affairs by fomenting “color revolutions,” the public uprisings in former Soviet republics like Georgia and Ukraine calling for greater democracy. “Russia and China stand against attempts by external forces to undermine security and stability in their common adjacent regions,” they said in the 5,300-word statement, which illustrated the widening rift between democracies and autocracies. In a message directly aimed at the United States, the two leaders vowed “to counter interference by outside forces in the internal affairs of sovereign countries under any pretext, oppose color revolutions and will increase cooperation in the aforementioned areas.” The statement made no mention of mutual support in Russia’s tensions over Ukraine and China’s with Taiwan, signaling the limits of the growing partnership. “This statement reflects the nature of the relationship with China,” said Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “It’s increasingly deep, increasingly directed at the U.S., but it’s not an alliance where both sides support each other on everything.” After the hard-nosed geopolitics of his talks with Mr. Putin, Mr. Xi presided over the Winter Games’ opening spectacular in the “Bird’s Nest” National Stadium. The ceremony, lasting more than two hours on a clear, frigid night, was filled with images of China as a friendly, open host, despite the imposition of the most stringent health restrictions ever in a major sporting event. The night began with a display of folksy charm watched by spectators carefully screened against Covid — a distant cry from the passionate crowd that filled the stadium for the grandiose, four-hour Summer Olympics ceremony there in 2008. The highlight for many that time was the appearance of 2,008 tightly coordinated drummers chanting Confucius: “Friends have come from afar, and how happy we are.” This time, a thousand performers jumped and twisted to China’s version of square dancing, a boisterous dance style popular among middle-aged people who gather in parks across China. Zhang Yimou, the director of the opening ceremony, as well as the 2008 opening, has said that this time he wanted to highlight China’s “ordinary humanity.” The president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, used his remarks at the opening ceremony to make a plea to keep politics out of international sports, a position that has drawn increasing criticism from detractors of the committee and of China. Evidence Politics, in fact, have been an undercurrent of these Games from the beginning. Claim Mr. Xi has seized on the occasion to present China as an anchor of stability in a crisis-ridden world. Being able to hold the Games on schedule, in the face of Covid, is enough proof of China’s dependability, he has suggested. Nearly 14 years after the 2008 Games, a very different China — much wealthier, more powerful, but also more feared — put on a show designed to reassure, as well as dazzle, its global audience. China, the message was, did not feel the same swaggering anxiety as it once did to prove that it had arrived. “China is no longer seeking entry into the international community. It is an embedded senior member,” Rana Mitter, a professor of Chinese history and politics at Oxford University, said of the contrast between 2008 and today. “There is also a much stronger message saying, ‘We’re no longer supplicants seeking to enter the room. We are defining the rules of what happens in the room’,” he said. Mr. Xi and other Chinese leaders have portrayed the Games as a celebration of sport, accusing the United States of politicizing the event by leading a “diplomatic boycott” by Western leaders and senior officials. Mr. Putin reiterated the accusation in remarks on the eve of his visit. Chinese state news media has even claimed, without evidence, that the United States was plotting to disrupt the festivities with orchestrated protests by athletes or other participants. In their meeting on Friday — the 38th between the two as leaders — Mr. Putin told his counterpart that the Chinese-Russian relationship had “taken on a truly unprecedented character.” “It is an example of a dignified relationship that helps each of us develop while supporting each other’s development,” Mr. Putin said at the start of talks that also covered trade and security issues. Even so, the limits of China’s support for Russia were on display. The leaders’ statement did not specifically mention Ukraine, where China has economic and geopolitical interests of its own. Mr. Putin was among 22 world leaders who attended the opening ceremony, a gathering that blunted at least somewhat the “diplomatic boycott” that Mr. Biden and other democratic leaders had announced. Among those in attendance were the leaders of the five Central Asian nations that were once part of the Soviet Union, as well as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and United Arab Emirates. Most, though not all, are autocratic nations, underscoring the growing divides in the world based less on political ideology than on modes of governance and tolerance for basic political freedoms. China’s record of rights abuses made the country’s choice as a host for these Games even more controversial than Beijing was for the Summer Olympics in 2008. Beijing became the first city given the chance to hold both the summer and winter editions of the premier sporting event in 2015 — only after Norway, Sweden and other European countries dropped out, citing costs or lack of public support for hosting the Olympics. Mr. Xi’s wide suppression of dissent, crushing of democratic opposition in Hong Kong and detention of hundreds of thousands of members of the Uyghur ethnic minority in Xinjiang region have fueled calls for boycotts by countries and corporate sponsors. Against that backdrop, critics denounced as hypocritical the choice of Dinigeer Yilamujiang, a cross-country skier who the Chinese said has Uyghur roots, to participate in the final, ritual lighting of the Olympic flame. Evidence China’s economy, however, is now more than three times larger than it was in 2008, meaning corporations and even countries have dared not risk losing access to the market. Rebuttal Mr. Xi, who was vice president in 2008, has since taking power in 2012 presided over a vigorous restoration of Communist Party power that he clearly hopes the Olympics will validate. “If you look back at that time, 2008, they were still willing to show the world that they speak the same language, that they were part of some idea,” Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist who helped design the Bird’s Nest stadium, said in an interview from Portugal. He left China in 2015 after his outspoken criticisms of the government. The open, airy design of the stadium was at odds with the direction China has taken, he said. Evidence “But by now,” he said, “the Chinese Communist Party is in a very different position. The whole tone has changed.” Rebuttal Holding the games could help put Mr. Xi in a flattering glow before a Communist Party congress late this year that will be crucial to extending his era in power. Mr. Xi appears increasingly assured of winning another five-year term as party leader at that congress, confirming his status as China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. “This is in fact a celebration of a decade of Xi Jinping’s era in power. It’s a celebration of his power,” Geremie R. Barmé, a fellow at the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relation, said of the Games’ opening ceremony. “It’s like a National Day celebration, but done in the guise of an international event.” During the ceremony, thousands of athletes representing 90 countries and territories marched around the stadium. So far, none have openly criticized the Chinese government, something officials have warned could be punished. “If any athletes, upon their departure from China and return to their home countries, choose to say anything about China, though, that could turn the narrative back toward the tensions,” said Heather Dichter, an associate professor of sports history at De Montfort University in Britain. Evidence “But,” she added, “it is likely that for the two weeks of the Games themselves, the focus will be on the athletes and the many challenges they have had to overcome.” Rebuttal

nytimes\olympics-china-american-athletes.txt

Using custom data configuration default-a35a925519ac7648

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-a35a925519ac7648\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-a35a925519ac7648\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

BEIJING — When the figure skater Nathan Chen won an Olympic gold medal for the United States, the state media in China, his parents’ birthplace, practically ignored his victory. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6384665369987488}
When the Californian-born skater Beverly Zhu stumbled on the ice in her first appearance for China, Chinese social media users told her to “go back to America.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6747229695320129}
When Eileen Gu won gold skiing for China, people in China celebrated her as the nation’s pride. But in the United States, where she was born and trained, some conservative political pundits called her ungrateful. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7754689455032349}
To be an American-born athlete of Chinese descent on sport’s most prominent global stage is to be a lightning rod for patriotic, some say nationalistic, sentiment. Once held up as bridges linking the two countries, the Chinese American Olympians — and their successes and failures — are increasingly being seen as proxies in the superpowers’ broader geopolitical tussle. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6846275925636292}
In China, a resurgent nationalism has meant that even among citizens, anyone airing even the mildest of criticisms can be accused of disloyalty. But the scrutiny of Chinese Americans is often harsh in other ways. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7840988636016846}
They are expected to show loyalty as part of a perceived extended Chinese family, yet are also distrusted as outsiders. Depending on the moment and mood, they can be shunned as traitors to the motherland or embraced as heroes who bring glory to the nation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9696533679962158}
For the athletes, choosing which country to compete for is often a personal or practical decision. Having ties to both the United States and China is also natural for Chinese Americans, many of whom grow up straddling two cultures, geographies and languages. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6399089694023132}
“When I’m in China, I’m Chinese and when I go to America, I’m American,” Ms. Gu, 18, has often said in response to questions about her decision to compete for China. Ms. Gu, whose father is white and mother is Chinese, was born and raised in California by her mother. She speaks Chinese fluently and visited Beijing frequently as a child. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7896623611450195}
But worsening geopolitical tensions between Beijing and Washington have made maintaining the balancing act difficult for such athletes. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8773142099380493}
“We can see the heightened expectations and demands for these young athletes to pick a side, to prove their loyalty in one way or another,” said Ellen Wu, an associate professor of history at Indiana University who researches Asian American history. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6644068360328674}
Many countries have for decades recruited foreign-born athletes to boost their chances of winning medals at the Olympics. Now China, too, is looking abroad for talent as well. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6836744546890259}
Around 30 athletes competing for China in this year’s Games are naturalized Chinese citizens, with most playing for the men’s and women’s ice hockey teams. None, though, have attracted as much scrutiny in the United States as Ms. Gu, who has already won two medals at these Games. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9111759066581726}
Ms. Gu has said her decision to compete for China was driven by a desire to grow the sport in the country. She has thanked both the United States and China for grooming her. But some commentators on both sides are treating the Olympics like a battlefield and using rhetoric about “betrayal” and “loyalty” to describe the athletes. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.5919663906097412}
Will Cain, a Fox News Host, said it was “ungrateful” of Ms. Gu to “betray the country that not just raised her, but turned her into a world-class skier.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5362567901611328}
In China, however, Ms. Gu has quickly become a superstar. Many Chinese obsess over her strong Beijing accent, her success as a model and reports about her near-perfect SAT scores. She has a bevy of lucrative endorsements from top Chinese brands, like JD.com, Bank of China and Anta. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6628572344779968}
Despite the outpouring of adulation in China, Ms. Gu is also walking a fine line. She has so far declined to answer repeated questions about whether she surrendered her United States passport. (China does not allow dual nationality.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5871171951293945}
Hu Xijin, a recently retired editor of Global Times, a brashly nationalist Chinese newspaper, warned Chinese propaganda organs on Sunday to moderate their praise of Ms. Gu, suggesting it was unclear which nation she would identify with as she got older. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8361003398895264}
“China’s national honor and credibility cannot be put at stake in the case of Gu Ailing,” he wrote, referring to Ms. Gu by her Chinese name. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.43867227435112}
The implication is that heritage alone is no longer enough for Chinese American athletes to be embraced by China. Rather, it now hinges on their ability to hew to China’s increasingly demanding, some say unrealistic, expectations. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5088933706283569}
Not being able to speak Chinese fluently was the first strike against Beverly Zhu, the California-born figure skater who competes for China under the name Zhu Yi. Then, she fell several times during competition, prompting Chinese social media users to unleash a wave of attacks against her, many of them ugly. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9672218561172485}
Many online users called her a “disgrace” and suggested — without evidence — that Ms. Zhu had been given a spot on the Chinese Olympics team over a Chinese-born skater because of the prominence of her father, a computer scientist who relocated to Peking University from the United States. The attacks were so intense that Chinese internet censors stepped in to tamp down the vitriol. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9291514754295349}
The negativity partly stems from a disillusionment with the United States and a perception in China that Washington is unfairly fanning hostility toward Beijing to try to block the country’s rise. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.46151578426361084}
“There was a time when people felt it was awesome to be American,” said Hung Huang, a Chinese-born American writer based in Beijing. “But as politics between the two countries have spiraled down the rabbit hole, Chinese feel that they should not — or cannot — admire a country that point fingers at them all the time.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6594944596290588}
The Chinese response to some of the athletes has been indifferent at best, derisive at worst. Last week, Chinese state media was noticeably silent on the gold medal win by Mr. Chen, the American figure skater, in the men’s individual event, focusing instead on Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu, who finished fourth, and on the Chinese figure skater Jin Boyang, who placed ninth. Chinese social media users posted comments dismissing the American athlete’s achievement as unworthy of attention because, in their view, he had insulted China. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9874234795570374}
Mr. Chen had initially rankled the Chinese public at the 2018 Games, when he skated to the music of “Mao’s Last Dancer,” a 2009 film about a Chinese ballet dancer who had defected. (Mr. Chen said last week that he was not aware of the broader context of the music when he chose it.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9670762419700623}
Then, in October, Mr. Chen drew more criticism in China when he supported his teammate, Evan Bates, in expressing concern about China’s human rights record. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5162206292152405}
“I agree with what Evan was saying,” Mr. Chen said at the time. “I think for a greater change to occur, there must be power that is beyond the Olympics. It has to be change at a remarkable scale.” {'label': 'Position', 'score': 0.5255598425865173}
Two decades ago, China held up athletes like the figure skater Michelle Kwan and the tennis player Michael Chang as cultural ambassadors. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7465742826461792}
David Zhuang, a Chinese-born table tennis player competing for the United States, recalled receiving a raucous welcome when he returned to Beijing in 2008 for the Summer Olympics. Mr. Zhuang, who had moved to the United States in 1990, said in a phone interview that during one match he played, a group of Chinese fans gathered around and shouted encouraging words. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9172182083129883}
“Can you imagine, I had left the country 18 years before and here they were cheering me on,” recalled Mr. Zhuang. “I couldn’t play after that, I was so emotional.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6276606321334839}
Watching the Games this time around, he said, the atmosphere felt completely different. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.747776448726654}
“When I look at the relationship today, and the politics and the competition between the two countries, it kind of hurts,” Mr. Zhuang said. “What a pity.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4052034616470337}

BEIJING — When the figure skater Nathan Chen won an Olympic gold medal for the United States, the state media in China, his parents’ birthplace, practically ignored his victory. When the Californian-born skater Beverly Zhu stumbled on the ice in her first appearance for China, Chinese social media users told her to “go back to America.” When Eileen Gu won gold skiing for China, people in China celebrated her as the nation’s pride. But in the United States, where she was born and trained, some conservative political pundits called her ungrateful. To be an American-born athlete of Chinese descent on sport’s most prominent global stage is to be a lightning rod for patriotic, some say nationalistic, sentiment. Once held up as bridges linking the two countries, the Chinese American Olympians — and their successes and failures — are increasingly being seen as proxies in the superpowers’ broader geopolitical tussle. In China, a resurgent nationalism has meant that even among citizens, anyone airing even the mildest of criticisms can be accused of disloyalty. But the scrutiny of Chinese Americans is often harsh in other ways. They are expected to show loyalty as part of a perceived extended Chinese family, yet are also distrusted as outsiders. Depending on the moment and mood, they can be shunned as traitors to the motherland or embraced as heroes who bring glory to the nation. For the athletes, choosing which country to compete for is often a personal or practical decision. Having ties to both the United States and China is also natural for Chinese Americans, many of whom grow up straddling two cultures, geographies and languages. “When I’m in China, I’m Chinese and when I go to America, I’m American,” Ms. Gu, 18, has often said in response to questions about her decision to compete for China. Ms. Gu, whose father is white and mother is Chinese, was born and raised in California by her mother. She speaks Chinese fluently and visited Beijing frequently as a child. Evidence But worsening geopolitical tensions between Beijing and Washington have made maintaining the balancing act difficult for such athletes. Rebuttal “We can see the heightened expectations and demands for these young athletes to pick a side, to prove their loyalty in one way or another,” said Ellen Wu, an associate professor of history at Indiana University who researches Asian American history. Many countries have for decades recruited foreign-born athletes to boost their chances of winning medals at the Olympics. Now China, too, is looking abroad for talent as well. Around 30 athletes competing for China in this year’s Games are naturalized Chinese citizens, with most playing for the men’s and women’s ice hockey teams. None, though, have attracted as much scrutiny in the United States as Ms. Gu, who has already won two medals at these Games. Evidence Ms. Gu has said her decision to compete for China was driven by a desire to grow the sport in the country. She has thanked both the United States and China for grooming her. But some commentators on both sides are treating the Olympics like a battlefield and using rhetoric about “betrayal” and “loyalty” to describe the athletes. Lead Will Cain, a Fox News Host, said it was “ungrateful” of Ms. Gu to “betray the country that not just raised her, but turned her into a world-class skier.” In China, however, Ms. Gu has quickly become a superstar. Many Chinese obsess over her strong Beijing accent, her success as a model and reports about her near-perfect SAT scores. She has a bevy of lucrative endorsements from top Chinese brands, like JD.com, Bank of China and Anta. Despite the outpouring of adulation in China, Ms. Gu is also walking a fine line. She has so far declined to answer repeated questions about whether she surrendered her United States passport. (China does not allow dual nationality.) Hu Xijin, a recently retired editor of Global Times, a brashly nationalist Chinese newspaper, warned Chinese propaganda organs on Sunday to moderate their praise of Ms. Gu, suggesting it was unclear which nation she would identify with as she got older. Evidence “China’s national honor and credibility cannot be put at stake in the case of Gu Ailing,” he wrote, referring to Ms. Gu by her Chinese name. Claim The implication is that heritage alone is no longer enough for Chinese American athletes to be embraced by China. Rather, it now hinges on their ability to hew to China’s increasingly demanding, some say unrealistic, expectations. Not being able to speak Chinese fluently was the first strike against Beverly Zhu, the California-born figure skater who competes for China under the name Zhu Yi. Then, she fell several times during competition, prompting Chinese social media users to unleash a wave of attacks against her, many of them ugly. Many online users called her a “disgrace” and suggested — without evidence — that Ms. Zhu had been given a spot on the Chinese Olympics team over a Chinese-born skater because of the prominence of her father, a computer scientist who relocated to Peking University from the United States. The attacks were so intense that Chinese internet censors stepped in to tamp down the vitriol. Evidence The negativity partly stems from a disillusionment with the United States and a perception in China that Washington is unfairly fanning hostility toward Beijing to try to block the country’s rise. Claim “There was a time when people felt it was awesome to be American,” said Hung Huang, a Chinese-born American writer based in Beijing. “But as politics between the two countries have spiraled down the rabbit hole, Chinese feel that they should not — or cannot — admire a country that point fingers at them all the time.” The Chinese response to some of the athletes has been indifferent at best, derisive at worst. Last week, Chinese state media was noticeably silent on the gold medal win by Mr. Chen, the American figure skater, in the men’s individual event, focusing instead on Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu, who finished fourth, and on the Chinese figure skater Jin Boyang, who placed ninth. Chinese social media users posted comments dismissing the American athlete’s achievement as unworthy of attention because, in their view, he had insulted China. Mr. Chen had initially rankled the Chinese public at the 2018 Games, when he skated to the music of “Mao’s Last Dancer,” a 2009 film about a Chinese ballet dancer who had defected. (Mr. Chen said last week that he was not aware of the broader context of the music when he chose it.) Then, in October, Mr. Chen drew more criticism in China when he supported his teammate, Evan Bates, in expressing concern about China’s human rights record. Evidence “I agree with what Evan was saying,” Mr. Chen said at the time. “I think for a greater change to occur, there must be power that is beyond the Olympics. It has to be change at a remarkable scale.” Position Two decades ago, China held up athletes like the figure skater Michelle Kwan and the tennis player Michael Chang as cultural ambassadors. David Zhuang, a Chinese-born table tennis player competing for the United States, recalled receiving a raucous welcome when he returned to Beijing in 2008 for the Summer Olympics. Mr. Zhuang, who had moved to the United States in 1990, said in a phone interview that during one match he played, a group of Chinese fans gathered around and shouted encouraging words. “Can you imagine, I had left the country 18 years before and here they were cheering me on,” recalled Mr. Zhuang. “I couldn’t play after that, I was so emotional.” Evidence Watching the Games this time around, he said, the atmosphere felt completely different. Claim “When I look at the relationship today, and the politics and the competition between the two countries, it kind of hurts,” Mr. Zhuang said. “What a pity.” Evidence

nytimes\olympics-skating-valieva-age.txt

Using custom data configuration default-0e6bffd40e8d00c8

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-0e6bffd40e8d00c8\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-0e6bffd40e8d00c8\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Like so many other people who watched the Russian star Kamila Valieva crumble during her free skate at the Beijing Games, Tara Lipinski, the Olympic champion and NBC announcer, woke up still feeling shaken over it. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9513756036758423}
She had slept just two and a half hours, worried about Valieva, 15, and her 17-year-old Russian teammates, whose raw emotions of devastation, joy and rage were captured on live TV as they navigated the debacle on their own, without any real comfort from adults. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8839029669761658}
It’s the opposite of how Lipinski felt when she won her Olympic gold medal, at 15. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.417884886264801}
“I had a very supportive team around me that gave me a safe place to pursue my Olympic dream and catch me when I fell,” she said in a telephone interview. “That’s not the case for everyone and that’s not everyone’s situation, and something needs to be put in place to protect these young athletes.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9165180921554565}
The question is: What can sports officials do to protect vulnerable teenagers from the kind of night that exposed the worst of Olympic sports, and of people? {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6752445101737976}
Valieva, at the center of a doping scandal, finished fourth and wandered around the rink in tears after a disastrous free skate. Anna Shcherbakova won, but said she felt empty inside. Alexandra Trusova, the silver medalist, was crying and enraged because she thought she deserved to win, and just wanted her mother. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9710018038749695}
Finding a way to protect teenagers inside an authoritarian sports system like Russia’s will be challenging. No doubt girls and women fear speaking out because of possible reprisal against them or their families. Setting up an independent group to provide oversight there is not as easy as it sounds. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6979736089706421}
This is Russia we’re talking about, the country caught switching out urine samples in a doping scheme at the 2014 Sochi Games so its athletes could win. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5915471911430359}
Watching a child suffer on live television has prompted some people to ask whether Valieva was too young to compete at the Games. The age issue is an age-old issue in sports like figure skating and gymnastics, where athletes peak in their midteens, before their bodies fully mature. In June, the International Skating Union is expected to consider a proposal to raise the age minimum to compete in senior events, like the Olympics, to 17 from 15. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.9174035787582397}
Karen Chen, the American who finished 16th in the women’s event, explained this week how this would help young athletes, saying that when she was 15 or 16 she was completely different from the person she is now, at 22. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6683996319770813}
“I don’t know if robot is the right word, but my coaches would tell me to go do something and I’d do it,” she said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4285210072994232}
The word “robot” should send off warning signals. Many young gymnasts in the Lawrence G. Nassar sexual abuse case described themselves as robots who did as they were told, even if it was trying skills that might hurt them, or limiting their food and even water intake. They also were too scared to question authority, even when being abused. The transformation of these young women into machines controlled by adults nearly crushed the sport. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9860485792160034}
Nassar, the former United States national team doctor found to have molested hundreds of girls and women under the guise of medical treatment, exploited a system that propped him up as a person to trust. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4419587254524231}
“If you have athletes who are raised in an abusive reality, it’s not like a switch is flipped when you turn 17 and suddenly your warped sense of reality and perception is eradicated,” Rachael Denhollander, the first athlete to publicly accuse Nassar of sexual abuse, said. “How old were some of Larry’s victims who, honest to God, believed that they were getting medical procedures because they had been taught not to trust their own perceptions when they were just children?” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9715226292610168}
Some of those gymnasts were as young as 8. Some were in their 20s. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6083036661148071}
“We need to be on guard for individuals and entities who are going to make raising the age minimum sound like an easy fix because they don’t want to dismantle the system and get rid of the people in power who are feeding the system,” Denhollander said. “That requires much more work and complete restructuring and people don’t want to do that work.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8641108870506287}
She added that raising the age might be a piece of the puzzle, but says older figure skaters might still face abuse because mature women will then be forced to remain as small and as thin as 15-year-olds. In skating, lighter athletes find it easier to spin and jump. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9011147618293762}
“It’s almost better for them to get out of the sport fast when they are young, so they can continue growing,” Denhollander said. “Raising the age might be like extending the abusive system for a few more years.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7820906639099121}
And it won’t fix the core problem in the sport, said Polina Edmunds, who was 15 when she finished ninth at the 2014 Sochi Games for the United States. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6066642999649048}
In a discussion on Instagram Live on Thursday, Edmunds said Eteri Tutberidze, the coach of all three Russians who competed in the women’s event in Beijing, holds undue power in the sport and “needs to be gone.” Tutberidze’s skaters have been given inflated scores and not penalized for mistakes for years, she said, so if the judging doesn’t change, the age limit must. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9828998446464539}
“I don’t think you should be held back at your competitive peak just because this whole fiasco is happening,” Edmunds said of raising the minimum age. “If you raise the age limit and not do anything about what this coaching team is doing, corruption is still going to happen.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5100728869438171}
Tutberidze’s skaters are known for their quadruple jumps, and landing them helps the skater rack up a huge number of points. But to do quads, according to Tutberidze, girls must start young to learn a foundation of the technique. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9038522243499756}
At the free skate on Thursday, Tutberidze was caught on camera telling Valieva, just as she stepped off the ice: “Why did you let it go? Why did you stop fighting? Explain it to me, why?” They did not hug. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7190074324607849}
Thomas Bach, the International Olympic Committee president, said on Friday that he was “very disturbed” to see how Valieva’s entourage treated her and the other Russians. He said that the committee’s executive board had been discussing raising the minimum competition age, but that it would be up to the international sports federations to mandate it. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9197703003883362}
Valieva’s entourage, including Tutberidze, is already under investigation by antidoping authorities after Valieva tested positive for a banned heart drug before the Olympics. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.45654425024986267}
Russia quickly responded to Bach’s comments, with the deputy prime minister saying Bach has “his own fictional narrative.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.39241307973861694}
But the whole world saw a true narrative play out on live TV on Thursday: Russian teenagers cried and shouted and flailed on the biggest stage in sports, and not a single person offered them true solace. Maybe it will lead to real change. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8387451171875}
“I don’t have the answers right now,” Lipinski said. “But I do know that this is not something you can just let go.” {'label': 'Position', 'score': 0.24610324203968048}

Like so many other people who watched the Russian star Kamila Valieva crumble during her free skate at the Beijing Games, Tara Lipinski, the Olympic champion and NBC announcer, woke up still feeling shaken over it. She had slept just two and a half hours, worried about Valieva, 15, and her 17-year-old Russian teammates, whose raw emotions of devastation, joy and rage were captured on live TV as they navigated the debacle on their own, without any real comfort from adults. Evidence It’s the opposite of how Lipinski felt when she won her Olympic gold medal, at 15. Claim “I had a very supportive team around me that gave me a safe place to pursue my Olympic dream and catch me when I fell,” she said in a telephone interview. “That’s not the case for everyone and that’s not everyone’s situation, and something needs to be put in place to protect these young athletes.” Evidence The question is: What can sports officials do to protect vulnerable teenagers from the kind of night that exposed the worst of Olympic sports, and of people? Claim Valieva, at the center of a doping scandal, finished fourth and wandered around the rink in tears after a disastrous free skate. Anna Shcherbakova won, but said she felt empty inside. Alexandra Trusova, the silver medalist, was crying and enraged because she thought she deserved to win, and just wanted her mother. Finding a way to protect teenagers inside an authoritarian sports system like Russia’s will be challenging. No doubt girls and women fear speaking out because of possible reprisal against them or their families. Setting up an independent group to provide oversight there is not as easy as it sounds. This is Russia we’re talking about, the country caught switching out urine samples in a doping scheme at the 2014 Sochi Games so its athletes could win. Evidence Watching a child suffer on live television has prompted some people to ask whether Valieva was too young to compete at the Games. The age issue is an age-old issue in sports like figure skating and gymnastics, where athletes peak in their midteens, before their bodies fully mature. In June, the International Skating Union is expected to consider a proposal to raise the age minimum to compete in senior events, like the Olympics, to 17 from 15. Lead Karen Chen, the American who finished 16th in the women’s event, explained this week how this would help young athletes, saying that when she was 15 or 16 she was completely different from the person she is now, at 22. “I don’t know if robot is the right word, but my coaches would tell me to go do something and I’d do it,” she said. The word “robot” should send off warning signals. Many young gymnasts in the Lawrence G. Nassar sexual abuse case described themselves as robots who did as they were told, even if it was trying skills that might hurt them, or limiting their food and even water intake. They also were too scared to question authority, even when being abused. The transformation of these young women into machines controlled by adults nearly crushed the sport. Evidence Nassar, the former United States national team doctor found to have molested hundreds of girls and women under the guise of medical treatment, exploited a system that propped him up as a person to trust. Claim “If you have athletes who are raised in an abusive reality, it’s not like a switch is flipped when you turn 17 and suddenly your warped sense of reality and perception is eradicated,” Rachael Denhollander, the first athlete to publicly accuse Nassar of sexual abuse, said. “How old were some of Larry’s victims who, honest to God, believed that they were getting medical procedures because they had been taught not to trust their own perceptions when they were just children?” Some of those gymnasts were as young as 8. Some were in their 20s. “We need to be on guard for individuals and entities who are going to make raising the age minimum sound like an easy fix because they don’t want to dismantle the system and get rid of the people in power who are feeding the system,” Denhollander said. “That requires much more work and complete restructuring and people don’t want to do that work.” She added that raising the age might be a piece of the puzzle, but says older figure skaters might still face abuse because mature women will then be forced to remain as small and as thin as 15-year-olds. In skating, lighter athletes find it easier to spin and jump. “It’s almost better for them to get out of the sport fast when they are young, so they can continue growing,” Denhollander said. “Raising the age might be like extending the abusive system for a few more years.” Evidence And it won’t fix the core problem in the sport, said Polina Edmunds, who was 15 when she finished ninth at the 2014 Sochi Games for the United States. Claim In a discussion on Instagram Live on Thursday, Edmunds said Eteri Tutberidze, the coach of all three Russians who competed in the women’s event in Beijing, holds undue power in the sport and “needs to be gone.” Tutberidze’s skaters have been given inflated scores and not penalized for mistakes for years, she said, so if the judging doesn’t change, the age limit must. “I don’t think you should be held back at your competitive peak just because this whole fiasco is happening,” Edmunds said of raising the minimum age. “If you raise the age limit and not do anything about what this coaching team is doing, corruption is still going to happen.” Tutberidze’s skaters are known for their quadruple jumps, and landing them helps the skater rack up a huge number of points. But to do quads, according to Tutberidze, girls must start young to learn a foundation of the technique. At the free skate on Thursday, Tutberidze was caught on camera telling Valieva, just as she stepped off the ice: “Why did you let it go? Why did you stop fighting? Explain it to me, why?” They did not hug. Thomas Bach, the International Olympic Committee president, said on Friday that he was “very disturbed” to see how Valieva’s entourage treated her and the other Russians. He said that the committee’s executive board had been discussing raising the minimum competition age, but that it would be up to the international sports federations to mandate it. Evidence Valieva’s entourage, including Tutberidze, is already under investigation by antidoping authorities after Valieva tested positive for a banned heart drug before the Olympics. Russia quickly responded to Bach’s comments, with the deputy prime minister saying Bach has “his own fictional narrative.” Claim But the whole world saw a true narrative play out on live TV on Thursday: Russian teenagers cried and shouted and flailed on the biggest stage in sports, and not a single person offered them true solace. Maybe it will lead to real change. Rebuttal “I don’t have the answers right now,” Lipinski said. “But I do know that this is not something you can just let go.” Position

nytimes\oscars-vaccine-mandate-coronavirus.txt

Using custom data configuration default-33522e57eb6dcae3

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-33522e57eb6dcae3\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-33522e57eb6dcae3\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

After much internal discussion, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has come to an agreement on coronavirus safety measures for attendees of the 94th Oscars, which will be held on March 27 in Los Angeles: The audience of 2,500 invited guests — including all nominees — will be required to show proof of vaccination against the coronavirus and at least two negative P.C.R. tests. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8725216388702393}
Performers and presenters also must undergo rigorous testing — but those people will not need to show proof of vaccination, a decision that an academy spokeswoman said on Thursday was in keeping with virus safety protocols on some television sets and return-to-work standards set by Los Angeles County. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.873621940612793}
Under an agreement last year between entertainment unions and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, production companies (in this case the academy) have the option to mandate vaccinations for cast and crew. But it is not a requirement, and some companies separate productions into zones, with different testing and social distancing requirements depending on how closely casts and crews need to work together. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9467498660087585}
Face covering requirements also will vary, the academy said. Nominees and their guests will be seated in the orchestra and parterre areas of the Dolby Theater and will not be required to wear masks. These attendees will be seated with more spacing than usual. The Dolby seats 3,317 people and 2,500 people will be invited, the academy said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9866790175437927}
Those in the mezzanine may be required to wear masks, as they will sit shoulder-to-shoulder. Infections are declining rapidly in Los Angeles County, and the academy said it was consulting with government officials, infectious disease experts and an independent vendor, Cosmos Health Solutions, on a policy. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9582538604736328}
Last week, following a report in The Hollywood Reporter that the academy was planning to forgo a vaccine mandate across the board, the organization was pummeled on social media by fans, stars, politicians and others for what appeared to be an effort to accommodate unvaccinated celebrities. Seth MacFarlane, who hosted the Oscars in 2013, was among those who criticized the academy on Twitter. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9677466750144958}
The academy declined to say anything publicly about The Hollywood Reporter’s article, but officials insisted that no decisions had been made. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4773418605327606}
Coronavirus safety protocols have been changing rapidly as infections have declined. On Tuesday, Disney eased its mask mandate for fully vaccinated theme park visitors in California and Florida. This week, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival said attendees (up to 125,000 fans a day in the prepandemic era) would not be required to be vaccinated, tested or masked. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9925734996795654}
According to government data, 1,713 coronavirus-positive patients were hospitalized in Los Angeles County as of Thursday, a 54 percent decline since Feb. 1. Over the last week, the county has reported an average of about 4,100 new cases per day, a decline of 77 percent from two weeks ago. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9652723073959351}
The academy’s decision puts it at odds with some award shows that are scheduled to take place in the weeks before the Oscars, including the Critics Choice Awards on March 13. Joey Berlin, the force behind the awards, told The Hollywood Reporter that everyone involved would be vaccinated. “I can’t invite people to a show where they’re not going to feel safe,” he said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8417856097221375}
The academy emphasized on Thursday that it would be in direct touch with nominees and studios to walk them through the various safety requirements. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.52801513671875}

After much internal discussion, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has come to an agreement on coronavirus safety measures for attendees of the 94th Oscars, which will be held on March 27 in Los Angeles: The audience of 2,500 invited guests — including all nominees — will be required to show proof of vaccination against the coronavirus and at least two negative P.C.R. tests. Performers and presenters also must undergo rigorous testing — but those people will not need to show proof of vaccination, a decision that an academy spokeswoman said on Thursday was in keeping with virus safety protocols on some television sets and return-to-work standards set by Los Angeles County. Under an agreement last year between entertainment unions and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, production companies (in this case the academy) have the option to mandate vaccinations for cast and crew. But it is not a requirement, and some companies separate productions into zones, with different testing and social distancing requirements depending on how closely casts and crews need to work together. Face covering requirements also will vary, the academy said. Nominees and their guests will be seated in the orchestra and parterre areas of the Dolby Theater and will not be required to wear masks. These attendees will be seated with more spacing than usual. The Dolby seats 3,317 people and 2,500 people will be invited, the academy said. Those in the mezzanine may be required to wear masks, as they will sit shoulder-to-shoulder. Infections are declining rapidly in Los Angeles County, and the academy said it was consulting with government officials, infectious disease experts and an independent vendor, Cosmos Health Solutions, on a policy. Last week, following a report in The Hollywood Reporter that the academy was planning to forgo a vaccine mandate across the board, the organization was pummeled on social media by fans, stars, politicians and others for what appeared to be an effort to accommodate unvaccinated celebrities. Seth MacFarlane, who hosted the Oscars in 2013, was among those who criticized the academy on Twitter. Evidence The academy declined to say anything publicly about The Hollywood Reporter’s article, but officials insisted that no decisions had been made. Claim Coronavirus safety protocols have been changing rapidly as infections have declined. On Tuesday, Disney eased its mask mandate for fully vaccinated theme park visitors in California and Florida. This week, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival said attendees (up to 125,000 fans a day in the prepandemic era) would not be required to be vaccinated, tested or masked. According to government data, 1,713 coronavirus-positive patients were hospitalized in Los Angeles County as of Thursday, a 54 percent decline since Feb. 1. Over the last week, the county has reported an average of about 4,100 new cases per day, a decline of 77 percent from two weeks ago. The academy’s decision puts it at odds with some award shows that are scheduled to take place in the weeks before the Oscars, including the Critics Choice Awards on March 13. Joey Berlin, the force behind the awards, told The Hollywood Reporter that everyone involved would be vaccinated. “I can’t invite people to a show where they’re not going to feel safe,” he said. Evidence The academy emphasized on Thursday that it would be in direct touch with nominees and studios to walk them through the various safety requirements. Claim

nytimes\ottawa-protest-convoy.txt

Using custom data configuration default-fa5f8fd966709cd8

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-fa5f8fd966709cd8\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-fa5f8fd966709cd8\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

OTTAWA — When I asked Matthew Wall, a 36-year-old electrician from Manitoba, what brought him to this city, which has been overwhelmed by a giant protest encampment, he answered with one word: “Mushrooms.” Searching for his purpose in life, he said, he went on a psychedelic spiritual journey and had an image of the Freedom Convoy, a demonstration against Covid rules that has converged on the Canadian capital with trucks and other large vehicles. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.956616997718811}
“I’m here for the rights of our kids, for parents’ rights, for everyone’s rights,” said Wall. “So kids can live in a future where they don’t have to have something covering their face, lose emotion. You don’t have the human connection, don’t see them smile anymore. It’s dehumanizing.” His daughters, he told me, were seeing a school therapist weekly because of the emotional fallout of the pandemic. “You’re taking away the love!” he said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8459618091583252}
Wall was sitting in the passenger seat of a black truck owned by a friend he’d made in Ottawa. It was covered in painted slogans, some with imperfect punctuation: “Dad’s On a Mission,” “Bless You in Advance Boys in Blue,” “Superhero’s Never Die.” Notes of thanks were taped to the truck, as were tickets that had been issued to protesters, including one to Wall for “bass noise (or unusual noise or noise that disturbs inhabitant(s) of the city),” which came with a fine of 1,000 Canadian dollars. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7801440358161926}
In the back seat was Jenna Wozney, a 24-year-old actress from Vancouver who’d flown to Ottawa on her own a few days earlier. She said some of her family and friends considered the protests “hateful,” but she’d been determined to see them for herself. Wozney deeply distrusted the vaccines, though she’d given in and gotten the shots in order to be able to work: “I’m so poor, I didn’t have any money, I had to get it,” she said, adding an expletive. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8729910850524902}
The demonstrations felt, to her, transformative. She saw them, somehow, as the next step after Black Lives Matter and Canada’s Every Child Matters movement, which is devoted to Indigenous survivors of abusive residential schools. “I feel like this is the final thing,” she said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5925012826919556}
“This is an awakening,” added Wall. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.775418758392334}
The day before, Wozney had broken up with her live-in boyfriend, who didn’t support her traveling to Ottawa, and canceled her ticket home. She wasn’t sure where she was sleeping that night but said several people had offered her a place to stay. At one point, speaking about the harms that she believes, falsely, are coming to children as a result of the coronavirus vaccine, she exclaimed, “I’ll die here!” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.894048810005188}
“I will, too,” said Wall. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.2947438359260559}
As I left, they insisted I take some of the fudge a stranger had given them. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4535984694957733}
The takeover of downtown Ottawa, whose streets are clogged by trucks, trailers and cars, is now approaching its fourth week. Populists and reactionaries worldwide, including Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson, have been thrilled by what’s happening here. A relatively small number of people — around 8,000 at the height of the protests, and on most days fewer — have snarled the capital of a major Western country and thrown its left-leaning government into chaos, demanding freedom from Covid-related public health measures. Related encampments on some of the bridges linking Canada to the United States affected hundreds of millions of dollars in trade a day before they were dispersed. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9744947552680969}
There is a debate in Canada about whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was justified on Monday in invoking the Emergencies Act, a 1988 law which gives the government the power to override certain civil liberties. But the fact that he resorted to the law — which has never before been used — shows the extent to which the protests are making the capital ungovernable. The tactic of using large vehicles to occupy a big city has inspired similar protests in countries including France, Israel and New Zealand. Trump supporters are planning American versions of the convoys next month. If they succeed in entrenching themselves somewhere, it could be terrifying, not least because unlike the Canadians, they’ll probably be heavily armed. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9156458377838135}
The thrust of the Ottawa protests is clearly reactionary, but there were plenty of people on the streets who seemed genuinely baffled by the media’s description of them as part of a far-right movement. They’d been infuriated and in some cases unmoored by Canada’s pandemic restrictions, which have been stricter than America’s. (As The National Post reported, during the Omicron wave, the provinces of Quebec and Ontario “closed schools and imposed blanket bans on indoor dining, gyms and bars,” and Quebec enacted a 10 p.m. curfew.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9783790111541748}
Most people I met said they’d never been to a protest before. Their willingness to not just go to Ottawa, but in many cases to stay there in the freezing cold for weeks on end, is a sign of how profoundly the pandemic has eroded trust in the authorities. Two years of Covid has created a climate of suspicion, confusion and grief that the far right has been able to exploit. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9458496570587158}
By the time I arrived at the beginning of the week, the occupation had shrunk, but the main encampment still spread out several blocks on either side of Ottawa’s Parliament Hill as well as down a number of other downtown streets, including some residential blocks. There were more food tents and barbecues than I could count. On Kent Street, people were roasting a whole pig, one of two they said had been donated. Others played hockey on the block between the Supreme Court and the Department of Justice. Someone had brought a hot tub. At times there were bouncy castles for the kids who were visiting, as well as those camped out with their parents. Imagine Occupy Wall Street, but set up by construction workers and military veterans with logistics training. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9850777387619019}
I didn’t see any Confederate or Nazi flags, though there had been some early on. I saw one Gadsden flag, and a guy in a MAGA hat who’d taped over the word “America” and written “Canada” on it. I saw lots of anti-vax paranoia, but few efforts to own the libs. The one word that was repeated over and over again — on signs, in chants and in conversation — was “freedom.” Many who’d found the pandemic intolerably alienating were reveling in human connection. Several people hugged me after I interviewed them, even though I told them I was from the hated mainstream media. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9881455898284912}
Imad Arraj, who installs HVAC systems and helps his wife run an Ottawa hunting and fishing shop, was at the protest on Tuesday night with a cousin. “It did a lot of damage,” he said of pandemic restrictions. “Me myself, I’m sitting home, I’m just feeling so down because all these friendships that you used to have, get together for a card game or whatever, it’s no longer there. We disconnected from each other.” He spoke bitterly of the 10-person limit on indoor gatherings in Ontario over the winter holidays. “We used to have a lot of people at our house — my brothers, my sisters, my mom come to visit,” he said sadly. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9876297116279602}
Before the Freedom Convoy came to Ottawa, Arraj said, he’d never taken part in a demonstration. “I was in depression, sitting at home. I thought I was alone. I thought I was going crazy. I thought I was the only person thinking that way,” he said. “And when this happened, I came down to see.” What he saw uplifted him. “The love that you’ll receive here, you are never, ever going to see it anywhere else,” he said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9651445746421814}
For many other Ottawans, though, the protests have been a siege, not a love fest. Locals described the incessant blaring of horns — which have ebbed, but not stopped, after an injunction — as a form of psychological torture. An Asian-inspired ice cream shop closed for several days after a member of its staff who was walking to work was confronted by two men and shoved to the ground for wearing a mask. “Based on the accounts we’ve heard from our neighbors, this behavior is not an isolated incident,” said a statement on the shop’s Instagram feed. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9803237915039062}
Not everyone at the protests comes from the far right, but the organizers do. Among them are Tamara Lich, formerly a leading figure in the fringe Maverick Party, which promotes the secession of three of Canada’s Western provinces, and Patrick King, a “great replacement” conspiracy theorist who has railed against a plot to use refugees “to depopulate the Anglo-Saxon race because they are the ones with the strongest bloodlines.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9388723969459534}
The crowds themselves contain a number of extremists. At an encampment at the border crossing in Coutts, Alberta, four people were arrested and charged with conspiracy to murder police officers. Two of them reportedly had ties to a white nationalist network called Diagolon, whose founder, Jeremy MacKenzie, has been part of the Ottawa demonstrations. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9857286810874939}
“One of the dynamics here is there are multiple faces to this occupation,” said Jeff Leiper, a member of the Ottawa City Council. “On weekends, there’s a party happening in occupied downtown — you’ve seen the stage, you’ve seen the bouncy castles, you’ve seen the hot tubs, you’ve seen the D.J.s. And that is one face of it.” But the other face has been more sinister. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9648327231407166}
Throughout the protests, men in black pickup trucks flying Canadian flags have menaced people in residential neighborhoods. “Frequently, over and over again, we get the reports from residents that the trucks are slowing down, they’re accosting residents on the street for wearing masks, and frequently they’re accompanying that with some sort of misogynist, homophobic or racist slur,” said Leiper. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9769040942192078}
Near the encampments, the restaurants and stores on some shopping streets, as well as the Rideau mall, have been shut for weeks, after being flooded with defiantly unmasked visitors when the convoys first arrived. Those who were horrified by the invasion of their city kept wondering: Where were the police? On Wednesday, cops handed out fliers warning protesters that they were subject to arrest. Under the Emergencies Act, the flier said, “anyone coming to Ottawa for the purpose of joining the ongoing demonstration is breaking the law.” But until Thursday, when the police started making arrests, their presence was minimal, and people continued to bring wagons full of fuel containers into the encampment to keep their engines running. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9928718209266663}
Once the protesters had lodged their vehicles in the city, there was no straightforward way to get them out. Some towing companies refused to cooperate with the police, but even if they were willing to help clear the roads, it was hard to see how they could remove the vehicles — some with their wheels taken off — without being swarmed. Arresting the demonstrators first, however, would be a struggle, because they could hide in their cars, trucks and trailers. The presence of children complicated matters further. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9842851758003235}
“I don’t think any of us have accepted at this point it’s inevitable that this will end in a firefight,” Leiper said on Wednesday. But, he added, “we’re all worried about it.” The day before, Ottawa’s police chief had resigned over his handling of the crisis. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7354933619499207}
Back at the occupation, I met Dana Wilson, who told me he was raised in Mississippi and had served in the U.S. military in Central America before moving to Canada in 1987. He gestured to a cluster of men nearby and said that they were veterans as well, and that he was part of a group led by a retired colonel. “From a military man’s perspective, you want to talk jargon, this is the last hill,” he said, describing Trudeau as “a narcissistic globalist sociopath” who has used “medical tyranny” to control the population, all for profit. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9796914458274841}
I asked him what he thought would happen when the police moved in. “We’ve got some things that we’re not prepared to talk about,” he said slyly. “We’ve got an arsenal, too. People power, darling.” When I pressed, he said that the arsenal was metaphorical. He called the encampment “the Canadian Alamo,” but then said that was a metaphor, too. At one point he said he didn’t believe there would be a police confrontation because Canadians wouldn’t stand for it; like others at the Freedom Convoy, he was convinced that the population is on his side, which polls show is very much not the case. (In one survey, 65 percent of respondents called the convoy “a small minority of Canadians” who were behaving “selfishly.”) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9879429936408997}
But he also seemed prepared for violence. Of the police, he said, “I hope they don’t start shooting people like they did at Kent State, but you know what, the world’s got to see.” {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.7649663090705872}
However the protests resolve, Elizabeth Simons, deputy director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, an organization akin to the Southern Poverty Law Center, expects the far-right forces behind them to be emboldened. “It’s a populist movement,” she said. “We have people who feel that they are the pure public fighting for the rights of the people versus the corrupt elite, which is government, media. That’s going to resonate with a lot of people when we’re two years into a pandemic where there is legitimate grievance and criticism” of how the authorities have handled things. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.7425556182861328}
Nobody, she said, “has come out of the last two years unscathed. Everyone’s affected in some way. It’s just which direction do they choose to go.” And how far. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4742618501186371}

OTTAWA — When I asked Matthew Wall, a 36-year-old electrician from Manitoba, what brought him to this city, which has been overwhelmed by a giant protest encampment, he answered with one word: “Mushrooms.” Searching for his purpose in life, he said, he went on a psychedelic spiritual journey and had an image of the Freedom Convoy, a demonstration against Covid rules that has converged on the Canadian capital with trucks and other large vehicles. “I’m here for the rights of our kids, for parents’ rights, for everyone’s rights,” said Wall. “So kids can live in a future where they don’t have to have something covering their face, lose emotion. You don’t have the human connection, don’t see them smile anymore. It’s dehumanizing.” His daughters, he told me, were seeing a school therapist weekly because of the emotional fallout of the pandemic. “You’re taking away the love!” he said. Wall was sitting in the passenger seat of a black truck owned by a friend he’d made in Ottawa. It was covered in painted slogans, some with imperfect punctuation: “Dad’s On a Mission,” “Bless You in Advance Boys in Blue,” “Superhero’s Never Die.” Notes of thanks were taped to the truck, as were tickets that had been issued to protesters, including one to Wall for “bass noise (or unusual noise or noise that disturbs inhabitant(s) of the city),” which came with a fine of 1,000 Canadian dollars. In the back seat was Jenna Wozney, a 24-year-old actress from Vancouver who’d flown to Ottawa on her own a few days earlier. She said some of her family and friends considered the protests “hateful,” but she’d been determined to see them for herself. Wozney deeply distrusted the vaccines, though she’d given in and gotten the shots in order to be able to work: “I’m so poor, I didn’t have any money, I had to get it,” she said, adding an expletive. The demonstrations felt, to her, transformative. She saw them, somehow, as the next step after Black Lives Matter and Canada’s Every Child Matters movement, which is devoted to Indigenous survivors of abusive residential schools. “I feel like this is the final thing,” she said. Evidence “This is an awakening,” added Wall. Claim The day before, Wozney had broken up with her live-in boyfriend, who didn’t support her traveling to Ottawa, and canceled her ticket home. She wasn’t sure where she was sleeping that night but said several people had offered her a place to stay. At one point, speaking about the harms that she believes, falsely, are coming to children as a result of the coronavirus vaccine, she exclaimed, “I’ll die here!” Evidence “I will, too,” said Wall. As I left, they insisted I take some of the fudge a stranger had given them. Claim The takeover of downtown Ottawa, whose streets are clogged by trucks, trailers and cars, is now approaching its fourth week. Populists and reactionaries worldwide, including Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson, have been thrilled by what’s happening here. A relatively small number of people — around 8,000 at the height of the protests, and on most days fewer — have snarled the capital of a major Western country and thrown its left-leaning government into chaos, demanding freedom from Covid-related public health measures. Related encampments on some of the bridges linking Canada to the United States affected hundreds of millions of dollars in trade a day before they were dispersed. There is a debate in Canada about whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was justified on Monday in invoking the Emergencies Act, a 1988 law which gives the government the power to override certain civil liberties. But the fact that he resorted to the law — which has never before been used — shows the extent to which the protests are making the capital ungovernable. The tactic of using large vehicles to occupy a big city has inspired similar protests in countries including France, Israel and New Zealand. Trump supporters are planning American versions of the convoys next month. If they succeed in entrenching themselves somewhere, it could be terrifying, not least because unlike the Canadians, they’ll probably be heavily armed. The thrust of the Ottawa protests is clearly reactionary, but there were plenty of people on the streets who seemed genuinely baffled by the media’s description of them as part of a far-right movement. They’d been infuriated and in some cases unmoored by Canada’s pandemic restrictions, which have been stricter than America’s. (As The National Post reported, during the Omicron wave, the provinces of Quebec and Ontario “closed schools and imposed blanket bans on indoor dining, gyms and bars,” and Quebec enacted a 10 p.m. curfew.) Most people I met said they’d never been to a protest before. Their willingness to not just go to Ottawa, but in many cases to stay there in the freezing cold for weeks on end, is a sign of how profoundly the pandemic has eroded trust in the authorities. Two years of Covid has created a climate of suspicion, confusion and grief that the far right has been able to exploit. By the time I arrived at the beginning of the week, the occupation had shrunk, but the main encampment still spread out several blocks on either side of Ottawa’s Parliament Hill as well as down a number of other downtown streets, including some residential blocks. There were more food tents and barbecues than I could count. On Kent Street, people were roasting a whole pig, one of two they said had been donated. Others played hockey on the block between the Supreme Court and the Department of Justice. Someone had brought a hot tub. At times there were bouncy castles for the kids who were visiting, as well as those camped out with their parents. Imagine Occupy Wall Street, but set up by construction workers and military veterans with logistics training. I didn’t see any Confederate or Nazi flags, though there had been some early on. I saw one Gadsden flag, and a guy in a MAGA hat who’d taped over the word “America” and written “Canada” on it. I saw lots of anti-vax paranoia, but few efforts to own the libs. The one word that was repeated over and over again — on signs, in chants and in conversation — was “freedom.” Many who’d found the pandemic intolerably alienating were reveling in human connection. Several people hugged me after I interviewed them, even though I told them I was from the hated mainstream media. Imad Arraj, who installs HVAC systems and helps his wife run an Ottawa hunting and fishing shop, was at the protest on Tuesday night with a cousin. “It did a lot of damage,” he said of pandemic restrictions. “Me myself, I’m sitting home, I’m just feeling so down because all these friendships that you used to have, get together for a card game or whatever, it’s no longer there. We disconnected from each other.” He spoke bitterly of the 10-person limit on indoor gatherings in Ontario over the winter holidays. “We used to have a lot of people at our house — my brothers, my sisters, my mom come to visit,” he said sadly. Before the Freedom Convoy came to Ottawa, Arraj said, he’d never taken part in a demonstration. “I was in depression, sitting at home. I thought I was alone. I thought I was going crazy. I thought I was the only person thinking that way,” he said. “And when this happened, I came down to see.” What he saw uplifted him. “The love that you’ll receive here, you are never, ever going to see it anywhere else,” he said. For many other Ottawans, though, the protests have been a siege, not a love fest. Locals described the incessant blaring of horns — which have ebbed, but not stopped, after an injunction — as a form of psychological torture. An Asian-inspired ice cream shop closed for several days after a member of its staff who was walking to work was confronted by two men and shoved to the ground for wearing a mask. “Based on the accounts we’ve heard from our neighbors, this behavior is not an isolated incident,” said a statement on the shop’s Instagram feed. Not everyone at the protests comes from the far right, but the organizers do. Among them are Tamara Lich, formerly a leading figure in the fringe Maverick Party, which promotes the secession of three of Canada’s Western provinces, and Patrick King, a “great replacement” conspiracy theorist who has railed against a plot to use refugees “to depopulate the Anglo-Saxon race because they are the ones with the strongest bloodlines.” The crowds themselves contain a number of extremists. At an encampment at the border crossing in Coutts, Alberta, four people were arrested and charged with conspiracy to murder police officers. Two of them reportedly had ties to a white nationalist network called Diagolon, whose founder, Jeremy MacKenzie, has been part of the Ottawa demonstrations. “One of the dynamics here is there are multiple faces to this occupation,” said Jeff Leiper, a member of the Ottawa City Council. “On weekends, there’s a party happening in occupied downtown — you’ve seen the stage, you’ve seen the bouncy castles, you’ve seen the hot tubs, you’ve seen the D.J.s. And that is one face of it.” But the other face has been more sinister. Throughout the protests, men in black pickup trucks flying Canadian flags have menaced people in residential neighborhoods. “Frequently, over and over again, we get the reports from residents that the trucks are slowing down, they’re accosting residents on the street for wearing masks, and frequently they’re accompanying that with some sort of misogynist, homophobic or racist slur,” said Leiper. Near the encampments, the restaurants and stores on some shopping streets, as well as the Rideau mall, have been shut for weeks, after being flooded with defiantly unmasked visitors when the convoys first arrived. Those who were horrified by the invasion of their city kept wondering: Where were the police? On Wednesday, cops handed out fliers warning protesters that they were subject to arrest. Under the Emergencies Act, the flier said, “anyone coming to Ottawa for the purpose of joining the ongoing demonstration is breaking the law.” But until Thursday, when the police started making arrests, their presence was minimal, and people continued to bring wagons full of fuel containers into the encampment to keep their engines running. Once the protesters had lodged their vehicles in the city, there was no straightforward way to get them out. Some towing companies refused to cooperate with the police, but even if they were willing to help clear the roads, it was hard to see how they could remove the vehicles — some with their wheels taken off — without being swarmed. Arresting the demonstrators first, however, would be a struggle, because they could hide in their cars, trucks and trailers. The presence of children complicated matters further. “I don’t think any of us have accepted at this point it’s inevitable that this will end in a firefight,” Leiper said on Wednesday. But, he added, “we’re all worried about it.” The day before, Ottawa’s police chief had resigned over his handling of the crisis. Back at the occupation, I met Dana Wilson, who told me he was raised in Mississippi and had served in the U.S. military in Central America before moving to Canada in 1987. He gestured to a cluster of men nearby and said that they were veterans as well, and that he was part of a group led by a retired colonel. “From a military man’s perspective, you want to talk jargon, this is the last hill,” he said, describing Trudeau as “a narcissistic globalist sociopath” who has used “medical tyranny” to control the population, all for profit. I asked him what he thought would happen when the police moved in. “We’ve got some things that we’re not prepared to talk about,” he said slyly. “We’ve got an arsenal, too. People power, darling.” When I pressed, he said that the arsenal was metaphorical. He called the encampment “the Canadian Alamo,” but then said that was a metaphor, too. At one point he said he didn’t believe there would be a police confrontation because Canadians wouldn’t stand for it; like others at the Freedom Convoy, he was convinced that the population is on his side, which polls show is very much not the case. (In one survey, 65 percent of respondents called the convoy “a small minority of Canadians” who were behaving “selfishly.”) Evidence But he also seemed prepared for violence. Of the police, he said, “I hope they don’t start shooting people like they did at Kent State, but you know what, the world’s got to see.” However the protests resolve, Elizabeth Simons, deputy director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, an organization akin to the Southern Poverty Law Center, expects the far-right forces behind them to be emboldened. “It’s a populist movement,” she said. “We have people who feel that they are the pure public fighting for the rights of the people versus the corrupt elite, which is government, media. That’s going to resonate with a lot of people when we’re two years into a pandemic where there is legitimate grievance and criticism” of how the authorities have handled things. Rebuttal Nobody, she said, “has come out of the last two years unscathed. Everyone’s affected in some way. It’s just which direction do they choose to go.” And how far. Evidence

nytimes\pairs-figure-skating-short-program.txt

Using custom data configuration default-7f7c42398c0f636f

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-7f7c42398c0f636f\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-7f7c42398c0f636f\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Follow our live coverage of the 2022 Winter Olympics. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8650999665260315}
The final figure skating competition of the Beijing Olympics opened on Friday, as 18 pairs took the ice for the short program, which lasts 2 minutes 40 seconds. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6359302401542664}
Unlike the ice dancing competition that took place earlier in the Games, pairs figure skating prioritizes more acrobatic skills: jumps, overhead lifts and throws. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.535818874835968}
Friday’s competition included performances by the rival pairs Anastasia Mishina and Aleksandr Galliamov of Russia, the reigning world champions, and Sui Wenjing and Han Cong of China, who won world titles in 2017 and 2019. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9220681190490723}
Sui and Han are eager for redemption. They had the gold within their grasp at the 2018 Olympics, but lost by a mere 0.43 points to a German team. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6428401470184326}
The early edge on Friday went to the Chinese team, which took the lead with the free skate still to come on Saturday. Mishina and Galliamov were in third, behind their fellow Russians Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9326561689376831}

Follow our live coverage of the 2022 Winter Olympics. Claim The final figure skating competition of the Beijing Olympics opened on Friday, as 18 pairs took the ice for the short program, which lasts 2 minutes 40 seconds. Unlike the ice dancing competition that took place earlier in the Games, pairs figure skating prioritizes more acrobatic skills: jumps, overhead lifts and throws. Friday’s competition included performances by the rival pairs Anastasia Mishina and Aleksandr Galliamov of Russia, the reigning world champions, and Sui Wenjing and Han Cong of China, who won world titles in 2017 and 2019. Sui and Han are eager for redemption. They had the gold within their grasp at the 2018 Olympics, but lost by a mere 0.43 points to a German team. The early edge on Friday went to the Chinese team, which took the lead with the free skate still to come on Saturday. Mishina and Galliamov were in third, behind their fellow Russians Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov. Evidence

nytimes\parenting-adult-children.txt

Using custom data configuration default-bb9397d0364f1d66

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-bb9397d0364f1d66\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-bb9397d0364f1d66\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

We have a mainstream directive for raising children in our society: You provide them with support, shelter and care until they’re 18, and then they’re supposed to be, more or less, self-sufficient, launched into the world as adults. This framework leaves out millions of parents whose children struggle with substance abuse or mental illness, who may be providing active care to their adult children for the rest of their lives. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7921116948127747}
A new book, “Difficult: Mothering Challenging Adult Children through Conflict and Change,” by Judith R. Smith, an associate professor at the Graduate School of Social Service at Fordham, seeks to define and explore this often painful type of parenting. An estimated 8.4 million Americans care for “an adult with an emotional or mental health issue,” according to a 2016 report from the National Alliance for Caregiving, and 45 percent of mental health caregivers are caring for an adult child. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.543828547000885}
For “Difficult,” Smith writes, she spoke to 50 mothers of adult children who were not fully independent, who had issues from severe mental illness to persistent unemployment. All of these mothers were over 60, and many were also dealing with their own declining physical and emotional health. Smith writes that half the women she spoke to were doing this with incomes under $17,000 a year for a family of two. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9891140460968018}
“My research revealed that a mother’s internalized mandate to protect her child does not end when her children are grown,” Smith writes, and she outlines the stigma and worry they feel about their children’s problems. She seeks to lessen this stigma for parents, more and more of whom will be in the same situation as her book’s subjects in the coming years, with young adults increasingly reporting mental health issues, particularly during the pandemic, and the opioid crisis continuing to take lives. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9359144568443298}
There is very little social support for these parents and their children: According to the National Alliance for Caregiving, the majority of adult caregivers have trouble getting services for their loved ones like day programs or peer support, and close to half say they struggle to find treatment for substance abuse. Just as for younger children, mothers are spackling over every gap in the system, sometimes destroying themselves in the process. Sixty-two percent of parents who are caregivers for adult children say their caregiving role has made their own health worse. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9892966151237488}
I spoke to Smith about how she chose the term “difficult adult children” to refer to this population, what can be done to help caregivers and their children in the near term and why it’s important for all parents to come to terms with their own ambivalence, because it is normal to have mixed feelings about our roles. The following conversation has been edited and condensed. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.545732855796814}
Jessica Grose: Tell me about the choice to use the term “difficult adult children,” and what it means for the mothers in your book. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.3959503471851349}
Judith Smith: As I was doing my research, one friend said, “No, no, no, you can’t use that word. It’s pejorative.” But as I say in the book, this is how “difficult” is defined: It’s something hard to do, it’s something hard to manage, and it’s something hard to understand. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5542628765106201}
Whether the kid had a substance use issue or severe mental illness or was depressed or unemployed and not willing to look for a job, what I heard was the mothers were struggling. It was really difficult for them to figure out what to do, because they didn’t see any choice. They felt committed as mothers to hang in there, but they felt hopeless for their child and they felt hopeless for themselves. Some of them were in real physical danger, living with an adult child who had serious problems. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9833358526229858}
Jessica Grose: I was so struck by the point that you made about how for mothers of children with mental illness who are in danger, that often their only option is to call the cops. Most parents do not want to call the police on their children. You also talk about the very limited options in the United States if parents are not able to take on the work of housing and protecting their children anymore. What’s the low-hanging fruit of what we can change to help these parents in the near term? I know this is a decades-long, complicated, multipronged problem. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8919211626052856}
Judith Smith: I think the advocates for parents of adults with severe mental illness are hoping for something they call “housing that heals” — supportive housing, group homes for people with severe mental illness that also have treatment. I think housing has to be a priority. There also need to be more psychiatric beds available for when people need them in the short term. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7227458953857422}
This is a political battle within the advocacy for severe mental illness. In terms of the people who advocate for the rights of the person with mental illness, and the families who would like there to be more options for temporarily taking away the rights of the person and having them be protected and hospitalized when they are really aggressive and a danger to themselves and their families. But it’s a horrendous decision to say, “Right now, my child will have to be homeless.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9632067680358887}
Jessica Grose: Reading about mothers in your book grappling with that decision was just awful. And I think part of why it was so awful for them is because of the blame that society tends to place on mothers. You quote the psychiatrist Stella Chess, who said, “There are very few jobs in which one individual will be blamed for anything that goes wrong, and fewer still in which what can go wrong, and the feeling of being blamed, is so devastating.” Can you tell me a bit more about how that ends up playing out, in terms of the guilt and shame that these mothers feel? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9018990397453308}
Judith Smith: I think we assume that women should be able to do everything, and we should be able to produce perfect kids. So I think for all parents, when our kids aren’t doing well, it affects our self-esteem. We feel bad and then we experience the conflict of ambivalence. Rozsika Parker wrote a wonderful book, “Torn in Two,” more than 20 years ago. She’s a psychoanalyst. And she really talks about how shameful it is for women to acknowledge their mixed feelings, which we all have. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.5613359212875366}
If you want to take a shower and your kid won’t let you take a shower, you’re angry, but then you feel bad for being angry. And society doesn’t allow women to have mixed feelings. Parker named the conflict of ambivalence as what is keeping mothers imprisoned and so isolated and feeling so bad about themselves — but that in fact, ambivalence is a part of all relationships. That’s a lot of what we do with clients, is allow them to express negative feelings about their parents or about their spouses and be able to live with it without feeling like they’re bad people. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.983700692653656}
Jessica Grose: I’ve heard most concepts in terms of the caregiving literature, but I hadn’t heard of “chronic sorrow,” before your book, which is something these mothers experience, and which is defined as “the long-term periodic sadness the chronically ill and their caregivers experience in reaction to continual losses.” I would love to hear you talk a little bit more about chronic sorrow — the hopes these parents once had for their kids that are now gone. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8691649436950684}
Judith Smith: Each mom I talked to experienced it in a different way. One woman has a 37-year-old son who has been home since college, when he had a breakdown. He was in the Harlem Children’s Choir, had a beautiful voice. Everybody liked him in the neighborhood and none of that is there anymore. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9549059271812439}
Each person talked about what wasn’t. One mom talked about her sadness at the birth of her first grandchild. It should have been the most joyous time in her life. But it made her remember her first birth, which was her son who ended up dying by suicide at 45. She had three other living children, and she felt so bad that she was feeling sorrowful at such a wonderful moment. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9673960208892822}
But this is what it is. There is a study where they actually, with a large data set, proved that you’re only as happy as your least happy child. There are a couple of books that are written about when our kids disappoint us, and the message is: “Move on. Let them take care of themselves.” But they’re not talking about this population. These mothers cannot just move on. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8597837090492249}
Reporting for The Times in 2021, Julie Halpert wrote about “How to Support Adult Children Struggling With Mental Health.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.40985992550849915}
On a more positive note, many created multigenerational households during the pandemic and have found it to be a mostly joyful experience (though not without its annoyances). {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.8548495769500732}
“The trend of ‘intensifying grandparenting’ — grandparents taking on more active roles in child-rearing and household management — has surged over the last few decades,” The Times’s Dani Blum reported in 2020. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7085548639297485}
I have twins who are 11 weeks old. I have given myself permission to stop pumping/breastfeeding. My body has done enough. I have done enough. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8695988655090332}
— Alison Buchbinder, Seattle {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8324492573738098}
If you want a chance to get your Tiny Victory published, find us on Instagram @NYTparenting and use the hashtag #tinyvictories; email us; or enter your Tiny Victory at the bottom of this page. Include your full name and location. Tiny Victories may be edited for clarity and style. Your name, location and comments may be published, but your contact information will not. By submitting to us, you agree that you have read, understand and accept the Reader Submission Terms in relation to all of the content and other information you send to us. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6897494792938232}

We have a mainstream directive for raising children in our society: You provide them with support, shelter and care until they’re 18, and then they’re supposed to be, more or less, self-sufficient, launched into the world as adults. This framework leaves out millions of parents whose children struggle with substance abuse or mental illness, who may be providing active care to their adult children for the rest of their lives. A new book, “Difficult: Mothering Challenging Adult Children through Conflict and Change,” by Judith R. Smith, an associate professor at the Graduate School of Social Service at Fordham, seeks to define and explore this often painful type of parenting. An estimated 8.4 million Americans care for “an adult with an emotional or mental health issue,” according to a 2016 report from the National Alliance for Caregiving, and 45 percent of mental health caregivers are caring for an adult child. For “Difficult,” Smith writes, she spoke to 50 mothers of adult children who were not fully independent, who had issues from severe mental illness to persistent unemployment. All of these mothers were over 60, and many were also dealing with their own declining physical and emotional health. Smith writes that half the women she spoke to were doing this with incomes under $17,000 a year for a family of two. “My research revealed that a mother’s internalized mandate to protect her child does not end when her children are grown,” Smith writes, and she outlines the stigma and worry they feel about their children’s problems. She seeks to lessen this stigma for parents, more and more of whom will be in the same situation as her book’s subjects in the coming years, with young adults increasingly reporting mental health issues, particularly during the pandemic, and the opioid crisis continuing to take lives. There is very little social support for these parents and their children: According to the National Alliance for Caregiving, the majority of adult caregivers have trouble getting services for their loved ones like day programs or peer support, and close to half say they struggle to find treatment for substance abuse. Just as for younger children, mothers are spackling over every gap in the system, sometimes destroying themselves in the process. Sixty-two percent of parents who are caregivers for adult children say their caregiving role has made their own health worse. Evidence I spoke to Smith about how she chose the term “difficult adult children” to refer to this population, what can be done to help caregivers and their children in the near term and why it’s important for all parents to come to terms with their own ambivalence, because it is normal to have mixed feelings about our roles. The following conversation has been edited and condensed. Jessica Grose: Tell me about the choice to use the term “difficult adult children,” and what it means for the mothers in your book. Lead Judith Smith: As I was doing my research, one friend said, “No, no, no, you can’t use that word. It’s pejorative.” But as I say in the book, this is how “difficult” is defined: It’s something hard to do, it’s something hard to manage, and it’s something hard to understand. Whether the kid had a substance use issue or severe mental illness or was depressed or unemployed and not willing to look for a job, what I heard was the mothers were struggling. It was really difficult for them to figure out what to do, because they didn’t see any choice. They felt committed as mothers to hang in there, but they felt hopeless for their child and they felt hopeless for themselves. Some of them were in real physical danger, living with an adult child who had serious problems. Jessica Grose: I was so struck by the point that you made about how for mothers of children with mental illness who are in danger, that often their only option is to call the cops. Most parents do not want to call the police on their children. You also talk about the very limited options in the United States if parents are not able to take on the work of housing and protecting their children anymore. What’s the low-hanging fruit of what we can change to help these parents in the near term? I know this is a decades-long, complicated, multipronged problem. Judith Smith: I think the advocates for parents of adults with severe mental illness are hoping for something they call “housing that heals” — supportive housing, group homes for people with severe mental illness that also have treatment. I think housing has to be a priority. There also need to be more psychiatric beds available for when people need them in the short term. This is a political battle within the advocacy for severe mental illness. In terms of the people who advocate for the rights of the person with mental illness, and the families who would like there to be more options for temporarily taking away the rights of the person and having them be protected and hospitalized when they are really aggressive and a danger to themselves and their families. But it’s a horrendous decision to say, “Right now, my child will have to be homeless.” Jessica Grose: Reading about mothers in your book grappling with that decision was just awful. And I think part of why it was so awful for them is because of the blame that society tends to place on mothers. You quote the psychiatrist Stella Chess, who said, “There are very few jobs in which one individual will be blamed for anything that goes wrong, and fewer still in which what can go wrong, and the feeling of being blamed, is so devastating.” Can you tell me a bit more about how that ends up playing out, in terms of the guilt and shame that these mothers feel? Evidence Judith Smith: I think we assume that women should be able to do everything, and we should be able to produce perfect kids. So I think for all parents, when our kids aren’t doing well, it affects our self-esteem. We feel bad and then we experience the conflict of ambivalence. Rozsika Parker wrote a wonderful book, “Torn in Two,” more than 20 years ago. She’s a psychoanalyst. And she really talks about how shameful it is for women to acknowledge their mixed feelings, which we all have. Concluding Statement If you want to take a shower and your kid won’t let you take a shower, you’re angry, but then you feel bad for being angry. And society doesn’t allow women to have mixed feelings. Parker named the conflict of ambivalence as what is keeping mothers imprisoned and so isolated and feeling so bad about themselves — but that in fact, ambivalence is a part of all relationships. That’s a lot of what we do with clients, is allow them to express negative feelings about their parents or about their spouses and be able to live with it without feeling like they’re bad people. Jessica Grose: I’ve heard most concepts in terms of the caregiving literature, but I hadn’t heard of “chronic sorrow,” before your book, which is something these mothers experience, and which is defined as “the long-term periodic sadness the chronically ill and their caregivers experience in reaction to continual losses.” I would love to hear you talk a little bit more about chronic sorrow — the hopes these parents once had for their kids that are now gone. Judith Smith: Each mom I talked to experienced it in a different way. One woman has a 37-year-old son who has been home since college, when he had a breakdown. He was in the Harlem Children’s Choir, had a beautiful voice. Everybody liked him in the neighborhood and none of that is there anymore. Each person talked about what wasn’t. One mom talked about her sadness at the birth of her first grandchild. It should have been the most joyous time in her life. But it made her remember her first birth, which was her son who ended up dying by suicide at 45. She had three other living children, and she felt so bad that she was feeling sorrowful at such a wonderful moment. Evidence But this is what it is. There is a study where they actually, with a large data set, proved that you’re only as happy as your least happy child. There are a couple of books that are written about when our kids disappoint us, and the message is: “Move on. Let them take care of themselves.” But they’re not talking about this population. These mothers cannot just move on. Rebuttal Reporting for The Times in 2021, Julie Halpert wrote about “How to Support Adult Children Struggling With Mental Health.” Evidence On a more positive note, many created multigenerational households during the pandemic and have found it to be a mostly joyful experience (though not without its annoyances). Counterclaim “The trend of ‘intensifying grandparenting’ — grandparents taking on more active roles in child-rearing and household management — has surged over the last few decades,” The Times’s Dani Blum reported in 2020. I have twins who are 11 weeks old. I have given myself permission to stop pumping/breastfeeding. My body has done enough. I have done enough. Evidence — Alison Buchbinder, Seattle Claim If you want a chance to get your Tiny Victory published, find us on Instagram @NYTparenting and use the hashtag #tinyvictories; email us; or enter your Tiny Victory at the bottom of this page. Include your full name and location. Tiny Victories may be edited for clarity and style. Your name, location and comments may be published, but your contact information will not. By submitting to us, you agree that you have read, understand and accept the Reader Submission Terms in relation to all of the content and other information you send to us. Evidence

nytimes\phil-mickelson-saudi-golf-tour.txt

Using custom data configuration default-22185a18bfb16f38

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-22185a18bfb16f38\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-22185a18bfb16f38\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

The pro golfer Phil Mickelson faced a mounting backlash this week for his reported remarks about a Saudi-backed golf tour, with a biographer quoting him as saying that though he knew of the kingdom’s “horrible record on human rights,” the tour was a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7903271317481995}
Mickelson, a six-time major winner, made the comments during a nearly hourlong phone interview last November, Alan Shipnuck, a longtime golf writer who is completing a biography on the golfer, said on Friday. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7946920394897461}
A former writer for Sports Illustrated and Golf magazine, Mr. Shipnuck reported the remarks on Thursday on The Fire Pit Collective, a golf site. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7501142024993896}
Mickelson, 51, had been asked to comment about his connection to the Super Golf League, an upstart tour whose main source of funding is the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, a sovereign wealth fund totaling more than $400 billion. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6013002991676331}
He called the Saudi authorities “scary,” using a profanity to describe them, and noted the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post journalist who was assassinated in 2018 with the approval of the kingdom’s crown prince, according to U.S. intelligence officials. Mickelson also alluded to the criminalization of homosexuality in Saudi Arabia, where being gay is punishable by death. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9890813827514648}
“We know they killed Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights,” Mickelson was quoted as saying by the biographer. “They execute people over there for being gay. Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it? Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9587768316268921}
Representatives for Mickelson, who is one of the biggest names linked to the breakaway tour, and the Saudi Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8921651840209961}
A spokesman for the PGA Tour declined to comment on Friday. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6060923337936401}
When reached on Friday, Mr. Shipnuck said that the golfer had previously declined to be interviewed for his biography, “Phil: The Rip-Roaring (and Unauthorized!) Biography of Golf’s Most Colorful Superstar,” which is scheduled to be published in May. But he said that Mickelson had granted him an on-the-record interview in an attempt to explain his potential involvement in the breakaway tour. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.950894832611084}
“Phil likes to play with fire,” Mr. Shipnuck said. “Sometimes when you play with fire, you’re going to get scorched. I don’t think he realized how hot this topic is with Saudi Arabia.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.886176586151123}
In his online account of the interview, Mr. Shipnuck said that the golfer had enlisted three other unidentified players to hire lawyers to draft the upstart tour’s operating agreement. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6731595396995544}
Several top golfers criticized Mickelson for his remarks, including Justin Thomas, the eighth-ranked player in the world. Speaking to reporters on Thursday at the Genesis Invitational near Los Angeles, he said it “seems like a bit of a pretty, you know, egotistical statement.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8120996952056885}
Thomas continued: “It’s like he’s done a lot of great things for the PGA Tour, it’s a big reason it is where it is, but him and others that are very adamant about that, if they’re that passionate, go ahead. I don’t think anybody’s stopping them.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5074920654296875}
Writing in The Sydney Morning Herald on Friday, the columnist Peter FitzSimons criticized Mickelson’s comments. He urged Greg Norman, a former golf champion and head of the breakaway tour, to cut ties with the new venture. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4138362407684326}
“Well, anyone with a conscience would resign,” Mr. FitzSimons wrote. “But with you I guess that is beside the point here. Your best plan is probably to do what you have been doing, and do better than anyone — hold your nose and go after more money.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5983012318611145}
Jane MacNeille, a spokeswoman for LIV Golf Investments — the company who chief executive, Mr. Norman, is starting the breakaway tour — heralded Mickelson in a statement on Friday. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5569577217102051}
“Phil is one of the greatest golfers in the history of the game, and we have an enormous amount of respect for him and his career,” she said. “Any league or tour would be lucky to have him.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7219972610473633}
Brandel Chamblee, an analyst for the Golf Channel and former PGA Tour player, said on Twitter on Friday that “those advocating for the Saudi backed tour, most notably Phil Mickelson, are trying to obfuscate their greed and masquerade that this is about growing the game.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.863841712474823}

The pro golfer Phil Mickelson faced a mounting backlash this week for his reported remarks about a Saudi-backed golf tour, with a biographer quoting him as saying that though he knew of the kingdom’s “horrible record on human rights,” the tour was a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” Mickelson, a six-time major winner, made the comments during a nearly hourlong phone interview last November, Alan Shipnuck, a longtime golf writer who is completing a biography on the golfer, said on Friday. A former writer for Sports Illustrated and Golf magazine, Mr. Shipnuck reported the remarks on Thursday on The Fire Pit Collective, a golf site. Mickelson, 51, had been asked to comment about his connection to the Super Golf League, an upstart tour whose main source of funding is the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, a sovereign wealth fund totaling more than $400 billion. He called the Saudi authorities “scary,” using a profanity to describe them, and noted the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post journalist who was assassinated in 2018 with the approval of the kingdom’s crown prince, according to U.S. intelligence officials. Mickelson also alluded to the criminalization of homosexuality in Saudi Arabia, where being gay is punishable by death. “We know they killed Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights,” Mickelson was quoted as saying by the biographer. “They execute people over there for being gay. Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it? Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates.” Representatives for Mickelson, who is one of the biggest names linked to the breakaway tour, and the Saudi Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday. Evidence A spokesman for the PGA Tour declined to comment on Friday. Claim When reached on Friday, Mr. Shipnuck said that the golfer had previously declined to be interviewed for his biography, “Phil: The Rip-Roaring (and Unauthorized!) Biography of Golf’s Most Colorful Superstar,” which is scheduled to be published in May. But he said that Mickelson had granted him an on-the-record interview in an attempt to explain his potential involvement in the breakaway tour. “Phil likes to play with fire,” Mr. Shipnuck said. “Sometimes when you play with fire, you’re going to get scorched. I don’t think he realized how hot this topic is with Saudi Arabia.” In his online account of the interview, Mr. Shipnuck said that the golfer had enlisted three other unidentified players to hire lawyers to draft the upstart tour’s operating agreement. Several top golfers criticized Mickelson for his remarks, including Justin Thomas, the eighth-ranked player in the world. Speaking to reporters on Thursday at the Genesis Invitational near Los Angeles, he said it “seems like a bit of a pretty, you know, egotistical statement.” Thomas continued: “It’s like he’s done a lot of great things for the PGA Tour, it’s a big reason it is where it is, but him and others that are very adamant about that, if they’re that passionate, go ahead. I don’t think anybody’s stopping them.” Writing in The Sydney Morning Herald on Friday, the columnist Peter FitzSimons criticized Mickelson’s comments. He urged Greg Norman, a former golf champion and head of the breakaway tour, to cut ties with the new venture. “Well, anyone with a conscience would resign,” Mr. FitzSimons wrote. “But with you I guess that is beside the point here. Your best plan is probably to do what you have been doing, and do better than anyone — hold your nose and go after more money.” Jane MacNeille, a spokeswoman for LIV Golf Investments — the company who chief executive, Mr. Norman, is starting the breakaway tour — heralded Mickelson in a statement on Friday. “Phil is one of the greatest golfers in the history of the game, and we have an enormous amount of respect for him and his career,” she said. “Any league or tour would be lucky to have him.” Brandel Chamblee, an analyst for the Golf Channel and former PGA Tour player, said on Twitter on Friday that “those advocating for the Saudi backed tour, most notably Phil Mickelson, are trying to obfuscate their greed and masquerade that this is about growing the game.” Evidence

nytimes\prosecutors-midterms-crime.txt

Using custom data configuration default-4d6b5327928a43d4

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-4d6b5327928a43d4\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-4d6b5327928a43d4\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Four years ago, progressive prosecutors were in the sweet spot of Democratic politics. Aligned with the growing Black Lives Matter movement but pragmatic enough to draw establishment support, they racked up wins in cities across the country. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.43922996520996094}
Today, a political backlash is brewing. With violent crime rates rising in some cities and elections looming, their attempts to roll back the tough-on-crime policies of the 1990s are increasingly under attack — from familiar critics on the right, but also from onetime allies within the Democratic Party. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.5703282952308655}
In San Francisco, District Attorney Chesa Boudin is facing a recall vote in June, stoked by criticism from the city’s Democratic mayor. In Los Angeles, the county district attorney, George Gascón, is trying to fend off a recall effort as some elected officials complain about new guidelines eliminating the death penalty and the prosecution of juveniles as adults. Manhattan’s new district attorney, Alvin Bragg, quickly ran afoul of the new Democratic mayor, Eric Adams, and his new police commissioner over policies that critics branded too lenient. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9836523532867432}
The combative resistance is a harsh turn for a group of leaders whom progressives hailed as an electoral success story. Rising homicide and violent crime rates have even Democrats in liberal cities calling for more law enforcement, not less — forcing prosecutors to defend their policies against their own allies. And traditional boosters on the left aren’t rushing to their aid, with some saying they’ve soured on the officials they once backed. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9849531650543213}
“I think that whole honeymoon period lasts about five or six hours,” said Wesley Bell, the prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County in Missouri, who is seeking re-election this fall. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.767666220664978}
Mr. Bell, a former city councilman in Ferguson, Mo., is part of the group of prosecutors elected on a promise to address racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Most support eliminating the death penalty and cash bail, limiting prosecutions for low-level, nonviolent offenses and scaling back sentences. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9175860285758972}
In a show of political strength, progressive prosecutors in Chicago and Philadelphia handily defeated challengers in recent years. Mr. Bell’s re-election bid in November is one of several races being watched for signs that voters’ views have shifted on those policies as violent crime has risen and racial justice protests have fallen out of the headlines. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9891669750213623}
Homicide rates spiked in 2020 and continued to rise last year, albeit less slowly, hitting levels not seen since the 1990s. Other violent crimes also are up. Both increases have occurred nationally, in cities with progressive prosecutors and in cities without. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9852533936500549}
That’s left no clear evidence linking progressive policies to these trends, but critics have been quick to make the connection, suggesting that prosecutors have let offenders walk and created an expectation that low-level offenses won’t be charged. Those arguments have landed on voters and city leaders already grappling with a scourge of pandemic-related ills — including mental health care needs and housing shortages, rising drug use, even traffic deaths. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5788257718086243}
Last week, a Quinnipiac University poll of registered voters in New York City found that 74 percent of respondents considered crime a “very serious” problem — the largest share since the survey began asking the question in 1999 and more than 20 percentage points greater than the previous high, which was recorded in January 2016. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.84657222032547}
Politicians are heeding those concerns. In New York, Mr. Adams, a Democrat, has promised to crack down on crime, and his police commissioner, Keechant Sewell, slammed Mr. Bragg’s proposals as threatening the safety of police officers and the public. In San Francisco, Mayor London Breed has become an outspoken critic of Mr. Boudin’s approach, which emphasizes social services over policing. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8803994655609131}
“This is not working,” Ms. Breed said recently on The New York Times podcast “Sway.” “We’ve added all these additional resources — the street crisis response team, the ambassadors, the services, the buildings we purchase, the hotels we purchase, the resources. We’ve added all these things to deal with food insecurity. All these things. Yet people are still being physically harmed and killed.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7527387738227844}
The criticisms from two prominent Black mayors are particularly biting. In their liberal cities, the leaders’ nuanced complaints have far more influence with voters than familiar attacks from Republicans or police unions. Both mayors have argued that the minority communities that want racism rooted from the justice system also want more robust policing and prosecutions. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8516938090324402}
President Biden, who was one of the architects of the tough-on-crime criminal justice overhaul of the 1990s, recently spoke highly of Mr. Adams’s focus on crime prevention. Some prosecutors and their allies took that as a sign that the Democratic establishment is digging in on a centrist approach to criminal justice reform. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.699221670627594}
Mr. Biden’s comments came as the Democratic Party worried about retaining the support of moderate suburban voters in midterm elections this year. Many Democratic lawmakers and strategists believe that protest slogans like “defund the police” hurt the party in the 2020 elections — particularly in Congressional swing districts and in Senate races. Republican candidates, eager to retake control of Congress in November, already have run advertisements casting Democrats as soft on crime. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.977503776550293}
Most progressive prosecutors oppose the calls to gut police department budgets, but that is a nuance often missed. At one liberal philanthropic group, some newer givers have said they will not donate to any criminal justice groups — or to the campaigns of progressive prosecutors — because they don’t want to endorse defunding the police, according to a person who connects donors to criminal justice causes, and who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9681069254875183}
Samuel Sinyangwe, an activist who has been involved in several organizations pushing progressive prosecutors, said prosecutors hadn’t been as forceful as law enforcement unions in selling their solutions to rising violence in cities. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6176825761795044}
“Police are spending a lot of money convincing people the appropriate response to that is more policing and incarceration,” he said. “I think that individual cities and counties are having to push back against that narrative. But I think they’re struggling to do that right now.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8847200870513916}
In San Francisco, Mr. Boudin argued that the effort to recall him was fueled by politics, not voters’ worries about crime. He pointed to the Republican megadonors who have funded the recall efforts and said Ms. Breed has a political incentive to see him ousted — he beat her preferred candidate for district attorney. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7232550382614136}
“These are Republican talking points,” Mr. Boudin said. “And it’s tremendously destructive to the Democratic Party and the long-term progress that the party is making at the local and national level around public safety and criminal justice to allow a few folks dissatisfied with a local election to undermine that progress.” {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.5205246806144714}
Mary Jung, a Democratic activist leading the recall campaign, said those who painted the efforts as fueled by conservatives or moderates were missing the point. Many of their supporters, she said, are lifelong liberal Democrats. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9120447039604187}
Those voters, she said, don’t view the effort to recall Mr. Boudin, who was elected in 2019, as a broad shift away from progressive policies, but as a local response in a community that feels unsafe. She cited several attacks against Asian immigrants and incidents of shoplifting as the sort of crimes that have rattled residents, regardless of political ideology. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7803236246109009}
In another sign of Democrats’ discontent, San Francisco voters ousted three progressive members of the Board of Education in a recall election driven by pandemic angst. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6501366496086121}
“Over 80,000 San Franciscans signed our petition and we only needed 53,000 signatures,” Ms. Jung said. “There’s only 33,000 registered Republicans in the city. So, you know, you do the math.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9636886715888977}
Some progressives warn against ignoring people’s fears. Kim Foxx, the state’s attorney for Cook County, which includes Chicago and some of the country’s most violence-plagued communities, said that any dismissive rhetoric could make prosecutors risk looking out of touch. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.857381284236908}
“You can’t dismiss people,” Ms. Foxx said. “I live in Chicago, where we hit 800 murders last year, and that represents 800 immediate families and thousands of people who are impacted.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.659423291683197}
Ms. Foxx faced a well-funded opponent and won re-election in 2020, as did Philadelphia’s district attorney, Larry Krasner, the following year. Those victories show the resilient support for progressive ideas, Mr. Krasner said, warning the Democratic Party not to abandon them. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9797882437705994}
“Put criminal justice reform on the ballot in every election in almost every jurisdiction, and what you’re going to see is a surge in turnout,” Mr. Krasner said. “And that turnout will overwhelmingly be unlikely voters, reluctant voters, brand-new voters, people who are not connected to what they see as governmental dysfunction between the parties — but they are connected to an issue that has affected their communities.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.903266966342926}
But there are signs that attitudes about overhauling the criminal justice system are changing even among progressives. Many activists have shifted their focus away from electoral politics and toward policies they think address the root of the problem, such as reducing the number of police and abolishing prisons. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.760225236415863}
That “makes it very difficult to even defend or support particular prosecutors, because at the end of the day, they’re still putting people in jail,” Mr. Sinyangwe said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7259659767150879}
In 2020, Mr. Bell, the St. Louis prosecutor, faced the ire of the same progressive activists who had helped elect him. That July, he announced that his renewed investigation into the 2014 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown Jr., a young Black man, which ignited weeks of protests, had delivered the same results: no charges for the officer who killed him. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.980413019657135}
Mr. Brown’s mother denounced Mr. Bell’s investigation. Speaking to reporters then, Mr. Bell said the announcement was “one of the most difficult things I’ve had to do as an elected official.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.82460618019104}
Asked to discuss the incident and the investigation, Mr. Bell declined. {'label': 'Position', 'score': 0.6409091949462891}
Josie Duffy Rice, the former president of The Appeal, a news outlet focused on criminal justice, said that in some ways the voters were learning the limitations of the progressive prosecutor’s role. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5458479523658752}
“Prosecutors have the power to cause a lot of problems,” Ms. Duffy Rice said. “But not enough power to solve problems.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.44145750999450684}

Four years ago, progressive prosecutors were in the sweet spot of Democratic politics. Aligned with the growing Black Lives Matter movement but pragmatic enough to draw establishment support, they racked up wins in cities across the country. Evidence Today, a political backlash is brewing. With violent crime rates rising in some cities and elections looming, their attempts to roll back the tough-on-crime policies of the 1990s are increasingly under attack — from familiar critics on the right, but also from onetime allies within the Democratic Party. Lead In San Francisco, District Attorney Chesa Boudin is facing a recall vote in June, stoked by criticism from the city’s Democratic mayor. In Los Angeles, the county district attorney, George Gascón, is trying to fend off a recall effort as some elected officials complain about new guidelines eliminating the death penalty and the prosecution of juveniles as adults. Manhattan’s new district attorney, Alvin Bragg, quickly ran afoul of the new Democratic mayor, Eric Adams, and his new police commissioner over policies that critics branded too lenient. The combative resistance is a harsh turn for a group of leaders whom progressives hailed as an electoral success story. Rising homicide and violent crime rates have even Democrats in liberal cities calling for more law enforcement, not less — forcing prosecutors to defend their policies against their own allies. And traditional boosters on the left aren’t rushing to their aid, with some saying they’ve soured on the officials they once backed. “I think that whole honeymoon period lasts about five or six hours,” said Wesley Bell, the prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County in Missouri, who is seeking re-election this fall. Mr. Bell, a former city councilman in Ferguson, Mo., is part of the group of prosecutors elected on a promise to address racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Most support eliminating the death penalty and cash bail, limiting prosecutions for low-level, nonviolent offenses and scaling back sentences. In a show of political strength, progressive prosecutors in Chicago and Philadelphia handily defeated challengers in recent years. Mr. Bell’s re-election bid in November is one of several races being watched for signs that voters’ views have shifted on those policies as violent crime has risen and racial justice protests have fallen out of the headlines. Homicide rates spiked in 2020 and continued to rise last year, albeit less slowly, hitting levels not seen since the 1990s. Other violent crimes also are up. Both increases have occurred nationally, in cities with progressive prosecutors and in cities without. That’s left no clear evidence linking progressive policies to these trends, but critics have been quick to make the connection, suggesting that prosecutors have let offenders walk and created an expectation that low-level offenses won’t be charged. Those arguments have landed on voters and city leaders already grappling with a scourge of pandemic-related ills — including mental health care needs and housing shortages, rising drug use, even traffic deaths. Last week, a Quinnipiac University poll of registered voters in New York City found that 74 percent of respondents considered crime a “very serious” problem — the largest share since the survey began asking the question in 1999 and more than 20 percentage points greater than the previous high, which was recorded in January 2016. Politicians are heeding those concerns. In New York, Mr. Adams, a Democrat, has promised to crack down on crime, and his police commissioner, Keechant Sewell, slammed Mr. Bragg’s proposals as threatening the safety of police officers and the public. In San Francisco, Mayor London Breed has become an outspoken critic of Mr. Boudin’s approach, which emphasizes social services over policing. “This is not working,” Ms. Breed said recently on The New York Times podcast “Sway.” “We’ve added all these additional resources — the street crisis response team, the ambassadors, the services, the buildings we purchase, the hotels we purchase, the resources. We’ve added all these things to deal with food insecurity. All these things. Yet people are still being physically harmed and killed.” The criticisms from two prominent Black mayors are particularly biting. In their liberal cities, the leaders’ nuanced complaints have far more influence with voters than familiar attacks from Republicans or police unions. Both mayors have argued that the minority communities that want racism rooted from the justice system also want more robust policing and prosecutions. President Biden, who was one of the architects of the tough-on-crime criminal justice overhaul of the 1990s, recently spoke highly of Mr. Adams’s focus on crime prevention. Some prosecutors and their allies took that as a sign that the Democratic establishment is digging in on a centrist approach to criminal justice reform. Mr. Biden’s comments came as the Democratic Party worried about retaining the support of moderate suburban voters in midterm elections this year. Many Democratic lawmakers and strategists believe that protest slogans like “defund the police” hurt the party in the 2020 elections — particularly in Congressional swing districts and in Senate races. Republican candidates, eager to retake control of Congress in November, already have run advertisements casting Democrats as soft on crime. Most progressive prosecutors oppose the calls to gut police department budgets, but that is a nuance often missed. At one liberal philanthropic group, some newer givers have said they will not donate to any criminal justice groups — or to the campaigns of progressive prosecutors — because they don’t want to endorse defunding the police, according to a person who connects donors to criminal justice causes, and who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations. Samuel Sinyangwe, an activist who has been involved in several organizations pushing progressive prosecutors, said prosecutors hadn’t been as forceful as law enforcement unions in selling their solutions to rising violence in cities. “Police are spending a lot of money convincing people the appropriate response to that is more policing and incarceration,” he said. “I think that individual cities and counties are having to push back against that narrative. But I think they’re struggling to do that right now.” In San Francisco, Mr. Boudin argued that the effort to recall him was fueled by politics, not voters’ worries about crime. He pointed to the Republican megadonors who have funded the recall efforts and said Ms. Breed has a political incentive to see him ousted — he beat her preferred candidate for district attorney. Evidence “These are Republican talking points,” Mr. Boudin said. “And it’s tremendously destructive to the Democratic Party and the long-term progress that the party is making at the local and national level around public safety and criminal justice to allow a few folks dissatisfied with a local election to undermine that progress.” Concluding Statement Mary Jung, a Democratic activist leading the recall campaign, said those who painted the efforts as fueled by conservatives or moderates were missing the point. Many of their supporters, she said, are lifelong liberal Democrats. Those voters, she said, don’t view the effort to recall Mr. Boudin, who was elected in 2019, as a broad shift away from progressive policies, but as a local response in a community that feels unsafe. She cited several attacks against Asian immigrants and incidents of shoplifting as the sort of crimes that have rattled residents, regardless of political ideology. Evidence In another sign of Democrats’ discontent, San Francisco voters ousted three progressive members of the Board of Education in a recall election driven by pandemic angst. Claim “Over 80,000 San Franciscans signed our petition and we only needed 53,000 signatures,” Ms. Jung said. “There’s only 33,000 registered Republicans in the city. So, you know, you do the math.” Evidence Some progressives warn against ignoring people’s fears. Kim Foxx, the state’s attorney for Cook County, which includes Chicago and some of the country’s most violence-plagued communities, said that any dismissive rhetoric could make prosecutors risk looking out of touch. Counterclaim “You can’t dismiss people,” Ms. Foxx said. “I live in Chicago, where we hit 800 murders last year, and that represents 800 immediate families and thousands of people who are impacted.” Ms. Foxx faced a well-funded opponent and won re-election in 2020, as did Philadelphia’s district attorney, Larry Krasner, the following year. Those victories show the resilient support for progressive ideas, Mr. Krasner said, warning the Democratic Party not to abandon them. “Put criminal justice reform on the ballot in every election in almost every jurisdiction, and what you’re going to see is a surge in turnout,” Mr. Krasner said. “And that turnout will overwhelmingly be unlikely voters, reluctant voters, brand-new voters, people who are not connected to what they see as governmental dysfunction between the parties — but they are connected to an issue that has affected their communities.” Evidence But there are signs that attitudes about overhauling the criminal justice system are changing even among progressives. Many activists have shifted their focus away from electoral politics and toward policies they think address the root of the problem, such as reducing the number of police and abolishing prisons. Rebuttal That “makes it very difficult to even defend or support particular prosecutors, because at the end of the day, they’re still putting people in jail,” Mr. Sinyangwe said. In 2020, Mr. Bell, the St. Louis prosecutor, faced the ire of the same progressive activists who had helped elect him. That July, he announced that his renewed investigation into the 2014 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown Jr., a young Black man, which ignited weeks of protests, had delivered the same results: no charges for the officer who killed him. Mr. Brown’s mother denounced Mr. Bell’s investigation. Speaking to reporters then, Mr. Bell said the announcement was “one of the most difficult things I’ve had to do as an elected official.” Evidence Asked to discuss the incident and the investigation, Mr. Bell declined. Position Josie Duffy Rice, the former president of The Appeal, a news outlet focused on criminal justice, said that in some ways the voters were learning the limitations of the progressive prosecutor’s role. “Prosecutors have the power to cause a lot of problems,” Ms. Duffy Rice said. “But not enough power to solve problems.” Evidence

nytimes\putin-russia-ukraine.txt

Using custom data configuration default-6e1010e3d68c6bf5

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-6e1010e3d68c6bf5\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-6e1010e3d68c6bf5\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

MOSCOW — At this moment of crescendo for the Ukraine crisis, it all comes down to what kind of leader President Vladimir V. Putin is. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6146241426467896}
In Moscow, many analysts remain convinced that the Russian president is essentially rational, and that the risks of invading Ukraine would be so great that his huge troop buildup makes sense only as a very convincing bluff. But some also leave the door open to the idea that he has fundamentally changed amid the pandemic, a shift that may have left him more paranoid, more aggrieved and more reckless. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6877636909484863}
The 20-foot-long table that Mr. Putin has used to socially distance himself this month from European leaders flying in for crisis talks symbolizes, to some longtime observers, his detachment from the rest of the world. For almost two years, Mr. Putin has ensconced himself in a virus-free cocoon unlike that of any Western leader, with state television showing him holding most key meetings by teleconference alone in a room and keeping even his own ministers at a distance on the rare occasions that he summons them in person. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9891709685325623}
Speculation over a leader’s mental state is always fraught, but as Mr. Putin’s momentous decision approaches, Moscow commentators puzzling over what he might do next in Ukraine are finding some degree of armchair psychology hard to avoid. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6313056945800781}
“There’s this impression of irritation, of a lack of interest, of an unwillingness to delve into anything new,” Ekaterina Schulmann, a political scientist and former member of Mr. Putin’s human rights council, said of the president’s recent public appearances. “The public is being shown that he has been in practical isolation, with ever fewer breaks, since the spring of 2020.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8962856531143188}
A large-scale invasion of Ukraine, many analysts point out, would be an enormous escalation compared with any of the actions that Mr. Putin has taken before. In 2014, the Kremlin’s subterfuge allowed Russian forces stripped of identifying markings to capture Crimea without firing a single shot. The proxy war that Mr. Putin fomented in Ukraine’s east allowed him to deny being a party to the conflict. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8799542188644409}
“Starting a full-scale war is completely not in Putin’s interest,” said Anastasia Likhacheva, the dean of world economy and international affairs at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. “It is very difficult for me to find any rational explanation for a desire to carry out such a campaign.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7431136965751648}
Even if Mr. Putin were able to take control of Ukraine, she noted, such a war would accomplish the opposite of what the president says he wants: rolling back the NATO presence in Eastern Europe. In the case of a war, the NATO allies would be “more unified than ever,” Ms. Likhacheva said, and they would be likely to deploy powerful new weaponry along Russia’s western frontiers. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9381569027900696}
At home, Mr. Putin has always been keen to project the aura of a sober statesman, overruling the nationalist firebrands on prime-time talk shows and in Parliament who have been urging him for years to annex more of Ukraine. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4959644675254822}
And while he casts himself as Russia’s guarantor of stability, he could face stark economic headwinds from Western sanctions and social upheaval if there are casualties on the battlefield and among civilians. Millions of Russians have relatives in Ukraine. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8843536376953125}
For the moment, Russians largely appear to subscribe to the Kremlin narrative that the West is the aggressor in the Ukraine crisis, said Denis Volkov, the director of the Levada Center, an independent pollster in Moscow. The alarmist messaging out of Washington about an imminent Russian invasion has only bolstered that view, he says, because it makes the West seem to be the one that is “exerting pressure and escalating tensions.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9546993374824524}
If Mr. Putin were to carry out a short and limited military operation along the lines of the five-day war against Georgia in 2008, he said, Russians could be expected to support it. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5507787466049194}
But “if this is a lengthy, bloody war, we get to a situation where it’s impossible to forecast,” Mr. Volkov said. “Stability ends.” {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8017947673797607}
Given that such a war still seems unthinkable and irrational to so many in Moscow, Russian foreign policy experts generally see the standoff over Ukraine as the latest stage in Mr. Putin’s yearslong effort to compel the West to accept what he sees as fundamental Russian security concerns. In the 1990s, that thinking goes, the West forced a new European order upon a weak Russia that disregarded its historical need for a geopolitical buffer zone to its west. And now that Russia is stronger, these experts say, it would be reasonable for any Kremlin leader to try to redraw that map. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9206147193908691}
Fyodor Lukyanov, a prominent Moscow foreign policy analyst who advises the Kremlin, said Mr. Putin’s goal now was “to force the outcome of the Cold War to be partially revised.” But he still believes Mr. Putin will stop short of full-scale invasion, instead using “special, asymmetric or hybrid means” — including making the West believe that he is truly prepared to attack. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8023415207862854}
“A bluff has to be very convincing,” Mr. Lukyanov said. And the United States, he went on, with its robust portrayals of an aggressive Russia poised for invasion, “is playing along at 200 percent.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6581270694732666}
By this line of thinking, Russian analysts say, American officials are falling for an exaggerated image of Mr. Putin as an evil genius. Since Mr. Putin’s past attempts to negotiate with the West over arms control and NATO expansion failed, they say, the Kremlin chose to raise the stakes to a point at which its interests became impossible to ignore. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8066489100456238}
“He is very successful at using the negative image that has been created of him as a demon,” said Dmitri Trenin, the head of the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank, describing Mr. Putin as capitalizing on fears that he was prepared to unleash a horrific war. “The plan was to create a threat, to create the sense that a war could happen.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9098174571990967}
But the experts have been wrong before. In 2014, Mr. Putin seized Crimea, even as few Moscow analysts were predicting a military intervention. And skeptics of the view that Mr. Putin is bluffing point out that during the pandemic, he has already taken actions that earlier seemed unlikely. His harsh crackdown against the network of Aleksei A. Navalny, for example, has contradicted what had been a widely held view that Mr. Putin was happy to allow some domestic dissent as an escape valve to manage discontent. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8311396241188049}
“Putin, in the last year, has crossed a lot of Rubicons,” Michael Kofman, the director of Russia studies at CNA, a research institute based in Arlington, Va., said last week. “Folks who believe that something this dramatic is unlikely or improbable may not have observed that qualitative shift in the last two years.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8185401558876038}

MOSCOW — At this moment of crescendo for the Ukraine crisis, it all comes down to what kind of leader President Vladimir V. Putin is. Claim In Moscow, many analysts remain convinced that the Russian president is essentially rational, and that the risks of invading Ukraine would be so great that his huge troop buildup makes sense only as a very convincing bluff. But some also leave the door open to the idea that he has fundamentally changed amid the pandemic, a shift that may have left him more paranoid, more aggrieved and more reckless. The 20-foot-long table that Mr. Putin has used to socially distance himself this month from European leaders flying in for crisis talks symbolizes, to some longtime observers, his detachment from the rest of the world. For almost two years, Mr. Putin has ensconced himself in a virus-free cocoon unlike that of any Western leader, with state television showing him holding most key meetings by teleconference alone in a room and keeping even his own ministers at a distance on the rare occasions that he summons them in person. Speculation over a leader’s mental state is always fraught, but as Mr. Putin’s momentous decision approaches, Moscow commentators puzzling over what he might do next in Ukraine are finding some degree of armchair psychology hard to avoid. “There’s this impression of irritation, of a lack of interest, of an unwillingness to delve into anything new,” Ekaterina Schulmann, a political scientist and former member of Mr. Putin’s human rights council, said of the president’s recent public appearances. “The public is being shown that he has been in practical isolation, with ever fewer breaks, since the spring of 2020.” A large-scale invasion of Ukraine, many analysts point out, would be an enormous escalation compared with any of the actions that Mr. Putin has taken before. In 2014, the Kremlin’s subterfuge allowed Russian forces stripped of identifying markings to capture Crimea without firing a single shot. The proxy war that Mr. Putin fomented in Ukraine’s east allowed him to deny being a party to the conflict. “Starting a full-scale war is completely not in Putin’s interest,” said Anastasia Likhacheva, the dean of world economy and international affairs at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. “It is very difficult for me to find any rational explanation for a desire to carry out such a campaign.” Even if Mr. Putin were able to take control of Ukraine, she noted, such a war would accomplish the opposite of what the president says he wants: rolling back the NATO presence in Eastern Europe. In the case of a war, the NATO allies would be “more unified than ever,” Ms. Likhacheva said, and they would be likely to deploy powerful new weaponry along Russia’s western frontiers. At home, Mr. Putin has always been keen to project the aura of a sober statesman, overruling the nationalist firebrands on prime-time talk shows and in Parliament who have been urging him for years to annex more of Ukraine. And while he casts himself as Russia’s guarantor of stability, he could face stark economic headwinds from Western sanctions and social upheaval if there are casualties on the battlefield and among civilians. Millions of Russians have relatives in Ukraine. For the moment, Russians largely appear to subscribe to the Kremlin narrative that the West is the aggressor in the Ukraine crisis, said Denis Volkov, the director of the Levada Center, an independent pollster in Moscow. The alarmist messaging out of Washington about an imminent Russian invasion has only bolstered that view, he says, because it makes the West seem to be the one that is “exerting pressure and escalating tensions.” If Mr. Putin were to carry out a short and limited military operation along the lines of the five-day war against Georgia in 2008, he said, Russians could be expected to support it. Evidence But “if this is a lengthy, bloody war, we get to a situation where it’s impossible to forecast,” Mr. Volkov said. “Stability ends.” Rebuttal Given that such a war still seems unthinkable and irrational to so many in Moscow, Russian foreign policy experts generally see the standoff over Ukraine as the latest stage in Mr. Putin’s yearslong effort to compel the West to accept what he sees as fundamental Russian security concerns. In the 1990s, that thinking goes, the West forced a new European order upon a weak Russia that disregarded its historical need for a geopolitical buffer zone to its west. And now that Russia is stronger, these experts say, it would be reasonable for any Kremlin leader to try to redraw that map. Fyodor Lukyanov, a prominent Moscow foreign policy analyst who advises the Kremlin, said Mr. Putin’s goal now was “to force the outcome of the Cold War to be partially revised.” But he still believes Mr. Putin will stop short of full-scale invasion, instead using “special, asymmetric or hybrid means” — including making the West believe that he is truly prepared to attack. “A bluff has to be very convincing,” Mr. Lukyanov said. And the United States, he went on, with its robust portrayals of an aggressive Russia poised for invasion, “is playing along at 200 percent.” By this line of thinking, Russian analysts say, American officials are falling for an exaggerated image of Mr. Putin as an evil genius. Since Mr. Putin’s past attempts to negotiate with the West over arms control and NATO expansion failed, they say, the Kremlin chose to raise the stakes to a point at which its interests became impossible to ignore. “He is very successful at using the negative image that has been created of him as a demon,” said Dmitri Trenin, the head of the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank, describing Mr. Putin as capitalizing on fears that he was prepared to unleash a horrific war. “The plan was to create a threat, to create the sense that a war could happen.” Evidence But the experts have been wrong before. In 2014, Mr. Putin seized Crimea, even as few Moscow analysts were predicting a military intervention. And skeptics of the view that Mr. Putin is bluffing point out that during the pandemic, he has already taken actions that earlier seemed unlikely. His harsh crackdown against the network of Aleksei A. Navalny, for example, has contradicted what had been a widely held view that Mr. Putin was happy to allow some domestic dissent as an escape valve to manage discontent. Rebuttal “Putin, in the last year, has crossed a lot of Rubicons,” Michael Kofman, the director of Russia studies at CNA, a research institute based in Arlington, Va., said last week. “Folks who believe that something this dramatic is unlikely or improbable may not have observed that qualitative shift in the last two years.” Evidence

nytimes\putin-ukraine.txt

Using custom data configuration default-e3b13b71347fee31

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-e3b13b71347fee31\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-e3b13b71347fee31\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Winston Churchill once described Russia as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” It’s a phrase that could equally apply to Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin’s leader, as the world awaits his next move on Ukraine. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7569836378097534}
To better understand him, we reached out to Fiona Hill, one of Washington’s foremost experts on the Russian president. Hill has served in multiple U.S. administrations as an intelligence officer and policy adviser, most recently as senior director for Europe and Russia on the National Security Council under Donald Trump. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.927915632724762}
She spoke with us about Putin’s longtime obsession with annexing Ukraine, her worries about how he’s closed himself off from outside information and his private boasts about his ability to “buy anyone” in the United States and Europe. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8826299905776978}
The following excerpts have been edited for length and clarity: {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8320984840393066}
How would you evaluate the administration’s handling of this crisis so far? What’s worked and what hasn’t? {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.39706099033355713}
I think they’re handling it as well as they can be, given the circumstances. Writ large, what the administration is doing right now is certainly what I would recommend doing. But I don’t know whether we can say if it’s going to work or not. The real test is going to be over a long period of time. I don’t think this is going to be a short, sharp crisis. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6618812084197998}
What do you mean? {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5020173788070679}
Putin’s been trying to get a grip on Ukraine for years now. They cut off the gas to Ukraine in 2006. He’s been in power for 22 years, and the whole of that time, he’s had Ukraine in the cross hairs one way or another, and it’s intensified over time. Putin wants to be the person who, on his watch, in his presidency, pulls Ukraine back into Russia’s orbit. And he could be president until 2036, in terms of what’s possible for him. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9678414463996887}
Is this fundamentally ideological for him, or geopolitical? {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5422412753105164}
It’s about him personally — his legacy, his view of himself, his view of Russian history. Putin clearly sees himself as a protagonist in Russian history, and is putting himself in the place of previous Russian leaders who’ve tried to gather in what he sees as the Russian land. Ukraine is the outlier, the one that got away that he’s got to bring back. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9000570178031921}
And does that mean that he’s behaving irrationally here? {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6093549132347107}
No, I don’t think he’s being irrational at all, from his perspective. He’s in a different frame from where we are. He’s living in history and his narrative of history. He also is part of a larger group of security people in Russia who have been opposed to NATO expansion; they want the U.S. out of Europe. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.40886202454566956}
But it seems like he’s made his security situation worse. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8820151686668396}
That’s from our perspective, on the outside. We don’t know exactly what he’s saying internally. From his point of view right now, he’s put the squeeze on Ukraine and the Ukrainian economy is getting crushed. He’s got all of our attention. We’re all running around doing nothing but talk about him. As he would say, he’s got us listening to him now. Whether we’re hearing him on the terms that he wants us to is another matter. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9633528590202332}
And you think he’s willing to pay a very high price to get Ukraine — that he’s willing to bear costs that we would see as exorbitant? {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.538243293762207}
Putin thinks that he can be more aggressive and wait us out and take more pain than we can. His goal is to make us split apart, to basically capitulate without actually doing anything. So he’s going to keep the pressure up. I can’t say whether he’s going to invade. But he’s certainly going to give us every impression that he’s going to do it, and he wants to try to find operational surprise. He wants to catch us out. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8994810581207275}
When he looks at the West’s response, how do you think he is reading the signals? {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5803075432777405}
I don’t know what signals he’s actually getting directly, beyond what they give him in media compilations, what he might be listening to. And that’s part of the problem. We don’t know how good his intel is. And in some cases, we think it might not be great, because he certainly hasn’t read the mood in Ukraine as well as you might have thought. He obviously thought that we’d all fall apart internationally. He didn’t probably anticipate the Western resolve that he’s got in the form of NATO and European unity, but we don’t know what people are telling him. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9243043065071106}
People may be spinning to him that he’s done a great job — you know, that we’re all capitulating. He’s got a parade of European leaders coming and he’s trying to test them and see what they have to say. He’s looking for daylight between them, and then he’s making his own assessment. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.89210045337677}
Do you think the United States needs to squeeze Putin harder? To impose punishments now rather than waiting for some trigger to set off another round of sanctions? {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.5170246958732605}
That would be a mistake, to trigger off right now. It doesn’t work with just such crude messaging. You have to be able to show the cause and effect of sanctions when you put them on and off. Otherwise, the view then becomes, well, there’s nothing we can do anyway. Because the Russian point of view is that all the U.S. does is put sanctions on countries irrespective of what they do. We would just feed that narrative. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8890073299407959}
And we already are doing plenty of things. But if we put unilateral sanctions on, in advance of more action from Russia, we’ll have lost the allies. And Putin probably is banking on some of that. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.84940505027771}
Last night, I was at dinner with a European foreign minister and one of their under secretaries. And they were relating discussions that they’ve had with the Russians, where Putin’s told them bluntly that they can buy anyone they like in the United States or in Europe. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.5692878365516663}
The Russians think that they can just outmaneuver the United States and all of the allies on sanctions and everything else. And they’ve been very successful at that, because they have lobbyists within our own systems who lobby for them. You can go down a long list of people who are on the board of Russian companies or do consulting for Russian companies. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9552958011627197}
Clearly, it’s always been for political leverage. And Putin explicitly says: I can buy anyone. I don’t, by the way, believe that he can, because I do know people who work with the Russians and maintain their integrity. But from Putin’s point of view, that’s very strong signaling. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7989581227302551}
You’ve sat it on meetings with Putin. Does he just kind of rant about his view of history? {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.35667335987091064}
He has his own rationality, and, in the past, he’s been much more measured. But I know a lot of people who’ve been through Moscow recently, and they’re saying the guy seems even more closed off to the news. We’re not really sure what kind of information he’s getting, and he seems more embittered. And is it the effect of Covid? Is it because he’s been stewing in his own juices for too long? We can’t really be sure what exactly he is thinking right now. You’ve got to hope that some saner voices are forcing a recalculation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.933769702911377}
Progressive prosecutors hoping to roll back tough-on-crime measures are facing resistance as violent crime rates grow in some cities, Astead W. Herndon reports. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.45602765679359436}
Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, endorsed Harriet Hageman, a pro-Trump candidate and primary challenger to Representative Liz Cheney. Annie Karni writes that the endorsement “was an extraordinary move” for McCarthy, who “has worked to toe a fine line between his far right flank and more mainstream conservatives.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9737842679023743}
The National Archives found that documents Donald Trump took home to Florida included classified information, report Luke Broadwater and Michael S. Schmidt. The letter from the archives also said “some White House staff conducted official business using nonofficial electronic messaging accounts.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9776582717895508}
On Politics regularly features work by Times photographers. On Valentine’s Day on Monday, Jill Biden led second-grade students from Aiton Elementary School in Washington on a tour of the White House. Here’s what Al Drago told us about capturing the image above: {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8526016473770142}
I could hear students cheering as their mini yellow school bus pulled up the driveway on the South Lawn. The first lady’s presence was a surprise, and when I saw her walking with the students, they were jumping up and down and holding hands with her. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.8106183409690857}
I like this photo because you can see how eager the students are to keep moving, as the girl in front pulls her classmate forward. The students toured the North Lawn, Cross Hall, the White House movie theater, and more. Biden, a longtime advocate for educators who continues to teach at Northern Virginia Community College, apologized to the visiting teacher for giving her students chocolate that could make them hyper later in the day. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9776705503463745}
I captured this photo as Biden was walking in between preplanned photo ops. Especially in covering politics, I am always looking for those more human, in-between moments. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4904724359512329}
Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.6893153190612793}

Winston Churchill once described Russia as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” It’s a phrase that could equally apply to Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin’s leader, as the world awaits his next move on Ukraine. To better understand him, we reached out to Fiona Hill, one of Washington’s foremost experts on the Russian president. Hill has served in multiple U.S. administrations as an intelligence officer and policy adviser, most recently as senior director for Europe and Russia on the National Security Council under Donald Trump. She spoke with us about Putin’s longtime obsession with annexing Ukraine, her worries about how he’s closed himself off from outside information and his private boasts about his ability to “buy anyone” in the United States and Europe. Evidence The following excerpts have been edited for length and clarity: Claim How would you evaluate the administration’s handling of this crisis so far? What’s worked and what hasn’t? Lead I think they’re handling it as well as they can be, given the circumstances. Writ large, what the administration is doing right now is certainly what I would recommend doing. But I don’t know whether we can say if it’s going to work or not. The real test is going to be over a long period of time. I don’t think this is going to be a short, sharp crisis. Evidence What do you mean? Claim Putin’s been trying to get a grip on Ukraine for years now. They cut off the gas to Ukraine in 2006. He’s been in power for 22 years, and the whole of that time, he’s had Ukraine in the cross hairs one way or another, and it’s intensified over time. Putin wants to be the person who, on his watch, in his presidency, pulls Ukraine back into Russia’s orbit. And he could be president until 2036, in terms of what’s possible for him. Evidence Is this fundamentally ideological for him, or geopolitical? Claim It’s about him personally — his legacy, his view of himself, his view of Russian history. Putin clearly sees himself as a protagonist in Russian history, and is putting himself in the place of previous Russian leaders who’ve tried to gather in what he sees as the Russian land. Ukraine is the outlier, the one that got away that he’s got to bring back. Evidence And does that mean that he’s behaving irrationally here? Claim No, I don’t think he’s being irrational at all, from his perspective. He’s in a different frame from where we are. He’s living in history and his narrative of history. He also is part of a larger group of security people in Russia who have been opposed to NATO expansion; they want the U.S. out of Europe. Evidence But it seems like he’s made his security situation worse. Rebuttal That’s from our perspective, on the outside. We don’t know exactly what he’s saying internally. From his point of view right now, he’s put the squeeze on Ukraine and the Ukrainian economy is getting crushed. He’s got all of our attention. We’re all running around doing nothing but talk about him. As he would say, he’s got us listening to him now. Whether we’re hearing him on the terms that he wants us to is another matter. Evidence And you think he’s willing to pay a very high price to get Ukraine — that he’s willing to bear costs that we would see as exorbitant? Claim Putin thinks that he can be more aggressive and wait us out and take more pain than we can. His goal is to make us split apart, to basically capitulate without actually doing anything. So he’s going to keep the pressure up. I can’t say whether he’s going to invade. But he’s certainly going to give us every impression that he’s going to do it, and he wants to try to find operational surprise. He wants to catch us out. Evidence When he looks at the West’s response, how do you think he is reading the signals? Claim I don’t know what signals he’s actually getting directly, beyond what they give him in media compilations, what he might be listening to. And that’s part of the problem. We don’t know how good his intel is. And in some cases, we think it might not be great, because he certainly hasn’t read the mood in Ukraine as well as you might have thought. He obviously thought that we’d all fall apart internationally. He didn’t probably anticipate the Western resolve that he’s got in the form of NATO and European unity, but we don’t know what people are telling him. People may be spinning to him that he’s done a great job — you know, that we’re all capitulating. He’s got a parade of European leaders coming and he’s trying to test them and see what they have to say. He’s looking for daylight between them, and then he’s making his own assessment. Evidence Do you think the United States needs to squeeze Putin harder? To impose punishments now rather than waiting for some trigger to set off another round of sanctions? Lead That would be a mistake, to trigger off right now. It doesn’t work with just such crude messaging. You have to be able to show the cause and effect of sanctions when you put them on and off. Otherwise, the view then becomes, well, there’s nothing we can do anyway. Because the Russian point of view is that all the U.S. does is put sanctions on countries irrespective of what they do. We would just feed that narrative. And we already are doing plenty of things. But if we put unilateral sanctions on, in advance of more action from Russia, we’ll have lost the allies. And Putin probably is banking on some of that. Evidence Last night, I was at dinner with a European foreign minister and one of their under secretaries. And they were relating discussions that they’ve had with the Russians, where Putin’s told them bluntly that they can buy anyone they like in the United States or in Europe. Lead The Russians think that they can just outmaneuver the United States and all of the allies on sanctions and everything else. And they’ve been very successful at that, because they have lobbyists within our own systems who lobby for them. You can go down a long list of people who are on the board of Russian companies or do consulting for Russian companies. Clearly, it’s always been for political leverage. And Putin explicitly says: I can buy anyone. I don’t, by the way, believe that he can, because I do know people who work with the Russians and maintain their integrity. But from Putin’s point of view, that’s very strong signaling. Evidence You’ve sat it on meetings with Putin. Does he just kind of rant about his view of history? Claim He has his own rationality, and, in the past, he’s been much more measured. But I know a lot of people who’ve been through Moscow recently, and they’re saying the guy seems even more closed off to the news. We’re not really sure what kind of information he’s getting, and he seems more embittered. And is it the effect of Covid? Is it because he’s been stewing in his own juices for too long? We can’t really be sure what exactly he is thinking right now. You’ve got to hope that some saner voices are forcing a recalculation. Evidence Progressive prosecutors hoping to roll back tough-on-crime measures are facing resistance as violent crime rates grow in some cities, Astead W. Herndon reports. Claim Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, endorsed Harriet Hageman, a pro-Trump candidate and primary challenger to Representative Liz Cheney. Annie Karni writes that the endorsement “was an extraordinary move” for McCarthy, who “has worked to toe a fine line between his far right flank and more mainstream conservatives.” The National Archives found that documents Donald Trump took home to Florida included classified information, report Luke Broadwater and Michael S. Schmidt. The letter from the archives also said “some White House staff conducted official business using nonofficial electronic messaging accounts.” On Politics regularly features work by Times photographers. On Valentine’s Day on Monday, Jill Biden led second-grade students from Aiton Elementary School in Washington on a tour of the White House. Here’s what Al Drago told us about capturing the image above: Evidence I could hear students cheering as their mini yellow school bus pulled up the driveway on the South Lawn. The first lady’s presence was a surprise, and when I saw her walking with the students, they were jumping up and down and holding hands with her. Lead I like this photo because you can see how eager the students are to keep moving, as the girl in front pulls her classmate forward. The students toured the North Lawn, Cross Hall, the White House movie theater, and more. Biden, a longtime advocate for educators who continues to teach at Northern Virginia Community College, apologized to the visiting teacher for giving her students chocolate that could make them hyper later in the day. I captured this photo as Biden was walking in between preplanned photo ops. Especially in covering politics, I am always looking for those more human, in-between moments. Evidence Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. Lead

nytimes\red-covid-partisan-deaths-vaccines.txt

Using custom data configuration default-9c104fcfe1064332

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-9c104fcfe1064332\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-9c104fcfe1064332\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Ocean County, in central New Jersey, is a mixture of beach towns like Barnegat Light and exurban towns like Toms River and Lakewood. Household income in the county exceeds the U.S. average. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7920103073120117}
Yet Ocean County is among the least vaccinated places in the Northeast. Only 53 percent of residents have received at least two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine (or one dose of Johnson & Johnson). Only 26 percent have received a booster shot. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.42957231402397156}
The large number of unvaccinated residents in Ocean County has led to a horrific amount of Covid illness and death. Nearly one out of every 200 residents has died from the virus. That is worse than the toll in Mississippi, the U.S. state with the largest amount of Covid death per capita, and worse than in any country except for Peru. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9893321990966797}
What explains the vaccine skepticism in Ocean County? Politics, above all. The county is heavily Republican. Donald Trump won it by almost 30 percentage points in 2020, and many Republicans — including those who are older than 65 and vulnerable to severe Covid illness — are skeptical of the vaccines. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9581911563873291}
This partisan divide has led to the “red Covid” phenomenon that I have described in previous newsletters. Today, I have an update. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.30319374799728394}
First, some background: In the pandemic’s initial months, Covid cases and deaths were higher in Democratic areas, probably because they are home to several major international airports. The virus entered this country on the West Coast and in the Northeast. But it didn’t stay there. By the end of Covid’s first year in the U.S., the virus had swept across the country, and there was no significant partisan divide in deaths. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9812489748001099}
Only after the vaccines became widely available, in early 2021 — and liberals were much more willing to get shots than conservatives — did Covid become a disproportionately Republican illness. By the summer of 2021, the gap was soaring: {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6729310154914856}
As the chart makes clear, the toll has been even worse in counties where Trump won by a landslide than in counties that he won narrowly. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5515180826187134}
This phenomenon is an example of how the country’s political polarization has warped people’s thinking, even when their personal safety is at stake. It is a tragedy — and a preventable one, too. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4995043873786926}
A new study by four Harvard epidemiologists estimates that 135,000 unvaccinated Americans died unnecessarily in the last six months of last year. The Texas Tribune recently profiled a young unvaccinated couple: She spent 139 days in intensive care; he asked, “Was this my fault?” They have both since been vaccinated. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.980604887008667}
There is one big new development. When I last wrote about red Covid, in November, I told you that the month-to-month partisan mortality gap might be peaking, for two main reasons. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6455308794975281}
One, the availability of highly effective post-infection treatments, like Pfizer’s Paxlovid, has been expanding; if they reduce deaths, the drop may be steepest where the toll is highest. Two, red America has probably built up more natural immunity to Covid — from prior infections — than blue America, given that many Democrats have tried harder to avoid getting the virus. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9638218283653259}
Sure enough, the partisan gap in Covid deaths is no longer growing as fast it had been, as you can see from the new closeness among these lines: {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.4729461073875427}
During the Omicron wave, deaths have risen less in red counties than in blue or purple counties. The most likely explanation seems to be that the number of Trump voters vulnerable to severe illness — which was still very large earlier last year — has declined, because more of them have built up some immunity to Covid from a previous infection. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9606123566627502}
But don’t make the mistake of confusing a gap that’s no longer growing as rapidly as it was with a gap that is shrinking. The gap between red and blue America — in terms of cumulative Covid deaths — is still growing. The red line in that second chart is higher than the blue line, which is a sign that more Republicans than Democrats or independents have needlessly died of Covid in recent weeks. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8157712817192078}
Another point to remember: Even in deeply blue counties, an outsize number of deaths are occurring among people who are unvaccinated or unboosted. The vaccines offer incredible protection from a deadly virus, yet many Americans have chosen to leave themselves exposed. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6597612500190735}
Related: Vaccinating and boosting more elderly people is probably the single best strategy for reducing deaths, The Atlantic’s Sarah Zhang writes. One way to do so: Increase Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals that make progress. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9013526439666748}
Virus developments: {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.9917938113212585}
California laid out a plan to treat Covid as a manageable risk that “will remain with us for some time, if not forever.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5847911238670349}
This moment feels particularly hard for immunocompromised people. “It’s like living behind a veil.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5621801614761353}
A flare-up in fighting between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists raised fears of a larger conflict. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.45153528451919556}
Western officials warned that Russia might use false claims of “genocide” against Russians in the region as a pretext for an invasion. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.3681066334247589}
The U.S. message to Russia: Prove us wrong. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.755475640296936}
President Biden will speak with allies today as tensions rise. Follow the latest. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4588225185871124}
New York’s attorney general can question Trump and two of his children under oath in an inquiry into his family business, a judge ruled. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7521970868110657}
Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, endorsed a primary challenger to Liz Cheney, a Trump-critical Republican. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7015179991722107}
Asian Americans powered the landslide vote to recall three San Francisco school board members. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6264644861221313}
Nicholas Kristof, a former Times columnist, ended his campaign for governor of Oregon after the state’s Supreme Court ruled that he hadn’t lived there long enough. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5228090286254883}
Tumbles and tears: Anna Shcherbakova of Russia won gold in women’s figure skating. Kamila Valieva finished fourth. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8667522668838501}
Eileen Gu won her second gold, this time in the halfpipe. See her jumps, twists and grabs. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.823174238204956}
The U.S. men’s curling team, the defending champion, didn’t win a medal. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6418880820274353}
The Canadian police have begun arresting protest organizers in Ottawa after weeks of gridlock. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6535696983337402}
Spotify’s deal with Joe Rogan is worth over $200 million — about twice the price previously reported. (The Times fact-checked an interview by Rogan that caused an uproar.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7872514128684998}
A dangerous storm is causing disruptions in Britain and elsewhere in Europe. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8427903056144714}
A ship with luxury vehicles, including 1,100 Porsches, is burning and adrift in the Atlantic. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5578184127807617}
Congress can fix how it certifies electoral votes for president — and help avert another Jan. 6, Senator Susan Collins argues. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.30680882930755615}
Covid has created a climate of suspicion, confusion and grief that the far right has exploited, Michelle Goldberg argues. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3766029477119446}
With P.J. O’Rourke’s death, we’ve lost the last funny conservative, Christopher Buckley says. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5105254054069519}
“Perfect Strangers”: Netflix’s first Arabic film has stirred a fierce moral debate. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5711515545845032}
Mystery: What was Stonehenge for? The answer may be simple. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5134559869766235}
Modern Love: When a former stripper marries a future minister. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7751952409744263}
A Times classic: A better way to pack your suitcase. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8154857754707336}
Lives Lived: The American airman Gail Halvorsen became known as the Candy Bomber for dropping chocolate and chewing gum, wrapped in tiny parachutes, during the Berlin airlift. He died at 101. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8064577579498291}
In recent years, “a certain polite, well-behaved-ness had become a defining characteristic of New York fashion,” Vanessa Friedman writes. This fashion week, which wrapped on Wednesday, welcomed a more “anarchic creative energy.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7360197901725769}
Shayne Oliver’s three-day extravaganza featured loads of straps and skin. “The point was less the actual garments than the energy they generated,” Friedman writes. “They were going somewhere, and not just in circles.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.908210277557373}
Other standout moments: Julia Fox opened the LaQuan Smith show — fresh from her breakup with Kanye West — in a slinky cutout dress, and the groundbreaking Black supermodels Beverly Johnson and Veronica Webb glided down the ’80s-flavored Sergio Hudson runway. Telfar put on a “happening,” mixing branded TV projects with fashion. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9798392653465271}
So what does the new era of New York fashion look like? Look to Eckhaus Latta, which held its show in an old downtown Manhattan building now scheduled for demolition. The show’s mood was celebratory; friends and family walked the runway, and the clothes maintained “a singular crafty intelligence that avoids easy categorization.” A poem was handed out: “The future is people walking down the street laughing.” — Sanam Yar, a Morning writer {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8013796210289001}
For more: The fashion isn’t just on the runway. Check out photos of street style in the city this week. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5716630220413208}
This gingery fried rice is a good way to use up leftover veggies. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.688759446144104}
The founder of the Black Film Archive, a living register of Black cinema, picks a film she loves from each decade from the 1920s to the 1970s. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4256064295768738}
New fiction from around the world, including a vicious novel set in an exclusive girls’ school in Ecuador. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6652854084968567}
Trevor Noah says that Russia loves playing chess. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6446435451507568}
How well did you follow this week’s headlines? {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.5161076784133911}
The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was celibacy. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.368509441614151}
Here’s today’s Wordle. (If you’re worried about your stats streak, play in the browser you’ve been using.) {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3858504593372345}
Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Waterlogged (five letters). {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.49343156814575195}
If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8220281004905701}
Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.8347710967063904}
P.S. Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” was published in the U.S. 137 years ago today. One month later, a Massachusetts library banned it. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5671885013580322}
Here’s today’s front page. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.4325719475746155}
“The Daily” is about nurses. “The Ezra Klein Show” features Alex Tabarrok, who has been prophetic about Covid policy. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.42125821113586426}
Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9251152276992798}
Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.3667740821838379}

Ocean County, in central New Jersey, is a mixture of beach towns like Barnegat Light and exurban towns like Toms River and Lakewood. Household income in the county exceeds the U.S. average. Evidence Yet Ocean County is among the least vaccinated places in the Northeast. Only 53 percent of residents have received at least two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine (or one dose of Johnson & Johnson). Only 26 percent have received a booster shot. Rebuttal The large number of unvaccinated residents in Ocean County has led to a horrific amount of Covid illness and death. Nearly one out of every 200 residents has died from the virus. That is worse than the toll in Mississippi, the U.S. state with the largest amount of Covid death per capita, and worse than in any country except for Peru. What explains the vaccine skepticism in Ocean County? Politics, above all. The county is heavily Republican. Donald Trump won it by almost 30 percentage points in 2020, and many Republicans — including those who are older than 65 and vulnerable to severe Covid illness — are skeptical of the vaccines. Evidence This partisan divide has led to the “red Covid” phenomenon that I have described in previous newsletters. Today, I have an update. Claim First, some background: In the pandemic’s initial months, Covid cases and deaths were higher in Democratic areas, probably because they are home to several major international airports. The virus entered this country on the West Coast and in the Northeast. But it didn’t stay there. By the end of Covid’s first year in the U.S., the virus had swept across the country, and there was no significant partisan divide in deaths. Only after the vaccines became widely available, in early 2021 — and liberals were much more willing to get shots than conservatives — did Covid become a disproportionately Republican illness. By the summer of 2021, the gap was soaring: Evidence As the chart makes clear, the toll has been even worse in counties where Trump won by a landslide than in counties that he won narrowly. This phenomenon is an example of how the country’s political polarization has warped people’s thinking, even when their personal safety is at stake. It is a tragedy — and a preventable one, too. Claim A new study by four Harvard epidemiologists estimates that 135,000 unvaccinated Americans died unnecessarily in the last six months of last year. The Texas Tribune recently profiled a young unvaccinated couple: She spent 139 days in intensive care; he asked, “Was this my fault?” They have both since been vaccinated. Evidence There is one big new development. When I last wrote about red Covid, in November, I told you that the month-to-month partisan mortality gap might be peaking, for two main reasons. Claim One, the availability of highly effective post-infection treatments, like Pfizer’s Paxlovid, has been expanding; if they reduce deaths, the drop may be steepest where the toll is highest. Two, red America has probably built up more natural immunity to Covid — from prior infections — than blue America, given that many Democrats have tried harder to avoid getting the virus. Evidence Sure enough, the partisan gap in Covid deaths is no longer growing as fast it had been, as you can see from the new closeness among these lines: Rebuttal During the Omicron wave, deaths have risen less in red counties than in blue or purple counties. The most likely explanation seems to be that the number of Trump voters vulnerable to severe illness — which was still very large earlier last year — has declined, because more of them have built up some immunity to Covid from a previous infection. Evidence But don’t make the mistake of confusing a gap that’s no longer growing as rapidly as it was with a gap that is shrinking. The gap between red and blue America — in terms of cumulative Covid deaths — is still growing. The red line in that second chart is higher than the blue line, which is a sign that more Republicans than Democrats or independents have needlessly died of Covid in recent weeks. Rebuttal Another point to remember: Even in deeply blue counties, an outsize number of deaths are occurring among people who are unvaccinated or unboosted. The vaccines offer incredible protection from a deadly virus, yet many Americans have chosen to leave themselves exposed. Related: Vaccinating and boosting more elderly people is probably the single best strategy for reducing deaths, The Atlantic’s Sarah Zhang writes. One way to do so: Increase Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals that make progress. Evidence Virus developments: California laid out a plan to treat Covid as a manageable risk that “will remain with us for some time, if not forever.” This moment feels particularly hard for immunocompromised people. “It’s like living behind a veil.” A flare-up in fighting between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists raised fears of a larger conflict. Claim Western officials warned that Russia might use false claims of “genocide” against Russians in the region as a pretext for an invasion. Counterclaim The U.S. message to Russia: Prove us wrong. President Biden will speak with allies today as tensions rise. Follow the latest. Claim New York’s attorney general can question Trump and two of his children under oath in an inquiry into his family business, a judge ruled. Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, endorsed a primary challenger to Liz Cheney, a Trump-critical Republican. Evidence Asian Americans powered the landslide vote to recall three San Francisco school board members. Claim Nicholas Kristof, a former Times columnist, ended his campaign for governor of Oregon after the state’s Supreme Court ruled that he hadn’t lived there long enough. Tumbles and tears: Anna Shcherbakova of Russia won gold in women’s figure skating. Kamila Valieva finished fourth. Eileen Gu won her second gold, this time in the halfpipe. See her jumps, twists and grabs. Evidence The U.S. men’s curling team, the defending champion, didn’t win a medal. The Canadian police have begun arresting protest organizers in Ottawa after weeks of gridlock. Claim Spotify’s deal with Joe Rogan is worth over $200 million — about twice the price previously reported. (The Times fact-checked an interview by Rogan that caused an uproar.) Evidence A dangerous storm is causing disruptions in Britain and elsewhere in Europe. A ship with luxury vehicles, including 1,100 Porsches, is burning and adrift in the Atlantic. Claim Congress can fix how it certifies electoral votes for president — and help avert another Jan. 6, Senator Susan Collins argues. Counterclaim Covid has created a climate of suspicion, confusion and grief that the far right has exploited, Michelle Goldberg argues. With P.J. O’Rourke’s death, we’ve lost the last funny conservative, Christopher Buckley says. “Perfect Strangers”: Netflix’s first Arabic film has stirred a fierce moral debate. Mystery: What was Stonehenge for? The answer may be simple. Modern Love: When a former stripper marries a future minister. A Times classic: A better way to pack your suitcase. Claim Lives Lived: The American airman Gail Halvorsen became known as the Candy Bomber for dropping chocolate and chewing gum, wrapped in tiny parachutes, during the Berlin airlift. He died at 101. In recent years, “a certain polite, well-behaved-ness had become a defining characteristic of New York fashion,” Vanessa Friedman writes. This fashion week, which wrapped on Wednesday, welcomed a more “anarchic creative energy.” Shayne Oliver’s three-day extravaganza featured loads of straps and skin. “The point was less the actual garments than the energy they generated,” Friedman writes. “They were going somewhere, and not just in circles.” Other standout moments: Julia Fox opened the LaQuan Smith show — fresh from her breakup with Kanye West — in a slinky cutout dress, and the groundbreaking Black supermodels Beverly Johnson and Veronica Webb glided down the ’80s-flavored Sergio Hudson runway. Telfar put on a “happening,” mixing branded TV projects with fashion. So what does the new era of New York fashion look like? Look to Eckhaus Latta, which held its show in an old downtown Manhattan building now scheduled for demolition. The show’s mood was celebratory; friends and family walked the runway, and the clothes maintained “a singular crafty intelligence that avoids easy categorization.” A poem was handed out: “The future is people walking down the street laughing.” — Sanam Yar, a Morning writer Evidence For more: The fashion isn’t just on the runway. Check out photos of street style in the city this week. This gingery fried rice is a good way to use up leftover veggies. Claim The founder of the Black Film Archive, a living register of Black cinema, picks a film she loves from each decade from the 1920s to the 1970s. Evidence New fiction from around the world, including a vicious novel set in an exclusive girls’ school in Ecuador. Trevor Noah says that Russia loves playing chess. Claim How well did you follow this week’s headlines? Lead The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was celibacy. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online. Evidence Here’s today’s Wordle. (If you’re worried about your stats streak, play in the browser you’ve been using.) Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Waterlogged (five letters). If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here. Claim Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David Concluding Statement P.S. Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” was published in the U.S. 137 years ago today. One month later, a Massachusetts library banned it. Evidence Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about nurses. “The Ezra Klein Show” features Alex Tabarrok, who has been prophetic about Covid policy. Lead Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Evidence Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Concluding Statement

nytimes\rokia-kone-jacknife-lee-bamanan-review.txt

Using custom data configuration default-a7059a1ab655dc1b

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-a7059a1ab655dc1b\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-a7059a1ab655dc1b\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

African musicians don’t need outside help. Lately, Nigerian Afrobeats, South African amapiano and other sleek, high-tech, thoroughly danceable styles have reached listeners worldwide without Western mediators. But the proof of a collaboration is in its sound, not its pedigree, and the album “Bamanan” is a transcontinental alliance that finds its own synergy. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9208752512931824}
“Bamanan” pairs Rokia Koné — a songwriter and singer from Mali who was a core member of the West African collective Les Amazones d’Afrique on their 2017 album “Republique Amazone” — with Garret “Jacknife” Lee, an Irish producer who has worked with U2 and Taylor Swift and is now based in California. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9396607279777527}
Koné’s voice rightfully leaps out of every song. Drawing on West African griot style, she sings with gritty insistence, building up to a sandpapery rasp when her melodies hit their peaks. Her Malian band provides percussion, backup vocals and barbed, modal lead guitar parts that hint at traditional African instruments. Lee adds keyboards, guitars and drumbeats, placing the songs in a swirling, spacious digital realm. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9586348533630371}
It’s an equal partnership that’s clearly enacted in the opening song, “Bi Ye Tulonba Ye” (“Today Is a Great Party”), a call for unity and an end to disagreements. At the beginning, Koné’s vocals are an urgent incantation amid reverent, hovering synthesizer tones, with a steady beat that slowly reveals itself. But the song lifts off as her band joins in, surrounding her with rhythmic and melodic crosscurrents of percussion and guitars. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9318156838417053}
“Bamanan” was constructed gradually and remotely; Koné and Lee never met in person while making the album. During the pandemic, sessions that Koné and her band had recorded in 2016 and 2018 — vocals in Paris, instruments in Mali — were sent to Lee after he heard Les Amazones when judging a remix contest. In 2020, Lee added instrumental parts and production to Koné’s sessions, and he collaborated on a new song with Koné, “N’yanyan.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9799265265464783}
Koné sang the vocals for “N’yanyan” in Mali in August 2020, on the day a coup toppled Mali’s government. Her melody is based on an ancient song; Lee’s production provides simple, sustained electric-piano chords. On a day of political upheaval, Koné thoughtfully counseled taking a long view while reflecting on mortality: “This life is passing/It’s only a moment in time,” she sang in Bambara, the language she uses throughout the album. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8743976950645447}
The sweep of history and a sense of indignation both course through “Bamanan.” Although she does not come from a hereditary griot family, Koné writes like a griot: a cultural guardian recalling history and speaking as a community conscience. “Bamanan” is named after the Bamana Empire, two centuries when Bambara leaders ruled much of what is now Mali. “Anw Tile (It’s Our Time)” meshes modal guitar curlicues and glimmering synthesizers as Koné and her backup singers chronicle the empire’s leaders and geography: “This time is golden,” women’s voices declare in unison. “Those who missed it, it was a great time.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9513907432556152}
The album also extends the forthright feminism Koné shared with Les Amazones. “Mayougouba” (“Move, Dance”) joyfully tells women worldwide, “You’re perfect as you are.” The album’s most kinetic song, “Kurunba,” paces its call-and-response vocals with galloping percussion and quick synthesizer ripples, as Koné’s narrator rails at being cast aside by her husband after raising their child: “Now my child is of age/Suddenly the door is shut on me,” she reproaches. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9664104580879211}
Koné also remade a song she brought to Les Amazones: “Mansa Soyari,” which celebrates female role models and insists, “A country isn’t great without women.” With Les Amazones, the song was swaggering, distorted, psychedelic rock; with Lee, it’s lighter, more syncopated and more transparent, invoking the kora (harp-guitar) patterns of griot songs, but also hinting at funk and flaunting some otherworldly digital manipulations. With its deep Bambara foundations, the song is certain of where it comes from; it’s just as certain that its passion will be understood anywhere. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9800570011138916}

African musicians don’t need outside help. Lately, Nigerian Afrobeats, South African amapiano and other sleek, high-tech, thoroughly danceable styles have reached listeners worldwide without Western mediators. But the proof of a collaboration is in its sound, not its pedigree, and the album “Bamanan” is a transcontinental alliance that finds its own synergy. “Bamanan” pairs Rokia Koné — a songwriter and singer from Mali who was a core member of the West African collective Les Amazones d’Afrique on their 2017 album “Republique Amazone” — with Garret “Jacknife” Lee, an Irish producer who has worked with U2 and Taylor Swift and is now based in California. Koné’s voice rightfully leaps out of every song. Drawing on West African griot style, she sings with gritty insistence, building up to a sandpapery rasp when her melodies hit their peaks. Her Malian band provides percussion, backup vocals and barbed, modal lead guitar parts that hint at traditional African instruments. Lee adds keyboards, guitars and drumbeats, placing the songs in a swirling, spacious digital realm. It’s an equal partnership that’s clearly enacted in the opening song, “Bi Ye Tulonba Ye” (“Today Is a Great Party”), a call for unity and an end to disagreements. At the beginning, Koné’s vocals are an urgent incantation amid reverent, hovering synthesizer tones, with a steady beat that slowly reveals itself. But the song lifts off as her band joins in, surrounding her with rhythmic and melodic crosscurrents of percussion and guitars. “Bamanan” was constructed gradually and remotely; Koné and Lee never met in person while making the album. During the pandemic, sessions that Koné and her band had recorded in 2016 and 2018 — vocals in Paris, instruments in Mali — were sent to Lee after he heard Les Amazones when judging a remix contest. In 2020, Lee added instrumental parts and production to Koné’s sessions, and he collaborated on a new song with Koné, “N’yanyan.” Koné sang the vocals for “N’yanyan” in Mali in August 2020, on the day a coup toppled Mali’s government. Her melody is based on an ancient song; Lee’s production provides simple, sustained electric-piano chords. On a day of political upheaval, Koné thoughtfully counseled taking a long view while reflecting on mortality: “This life is passing/It’s only a moment in time,” she sang in Bambara, the language she uses throughout the album. The sweep of history and a sense of indignation both course through “Bamanan.” Although she does not come from a hereditary griot family, Koné writes like a griot: a cultural guardian recalling history and speaking as a community conscience. “Bamanan” is named after the Bamana Empire, two centuries when Bambara leaders ruled much of what is now Mali. “Anw Tile (It’s Our Time)” meshes modal guitar curlicues and glimmering synthesizers as Koné and her backup singers chronicle the empire’s leaders and geography: “This time is golden,” women’s voices declare in unison. “Those who missed it, it was a great time.” The album also extends the forthright feminism Koné shared with Les Amazones. “Mayougouba” (“Move, Dance”) joyfully tells women worldwide, “You’re perfect as you are.” The album’s most kinetic song, “Kurunba,” paces its call-and-response vocals with galloping percussion and quick synthesizer ripples, as Koné’s narrator rails at being cast aside by her husband after raising their child: “Now my child is of age/Suddenly the door is shut on me,” she reproaches. Koné also remade a song she brought to Les Amazones: “Mansa Soyari,” which celebrates female role models and insists, “A country isn’t great without women.” With Les Amazones, the song was swaggering, distorted, psychedelic rock; with Lee, it’s lighter, more syncopated and more transparent, invoking the kora (harp-guitar) patterns of griot songs, but also hinting at funk and flaunting some otherworldly digital manipulations. With its deep Bambara foundations, the song is certain of where it comes from; it’s just as certain that its passion will be understood anywhere. Evidence

nytimes\sacklers-opioids-lawsuit.txt

Using custom data configuration default-7ddf93945e9560d6

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-7ddf93945e9560d6\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-7ddf93945e9560d6\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Members of the billionaire Sackler family have sweetened their cash offer to settle thousands of opioid-related lawsuits against them and their company, Purdue Pharma, offering up to $6 billion, an increase of more than $1 billion from an earlier offer, according to a mediator’s report filed Friday afternoon in bankruptcy court. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9803865551948547}
But the deal is not done. The Sacklers have not budged from the line they drew in the sand at the outset of the case. In exchange for their billions, they are continuing to demand an end to all civil claims against them related to Purdue and opioids, and that future such claims be prohibited. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.9056907296180725}
Legal experts and the public have criticized efforts by the Sackler family to seek personal protection from liability. It is a shield typically granted to companies seeking bankruptcy restructuring, as Purdue is, but rarely extended to owners who do not file for personal bankruptcy. Eight states and the District of Columbia refused to sign on to an earlier proposal because of the Sackler liability shields. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8762670755386353}
The mediator, Judge Shelley Chapman, a federal bankruptcy judge, said in her report that a “supermajority” of those states had now agreed to the new offer. But holdouts remain and the deal is not yet done. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7652810215950012}
The earlier offer included a pledge from the Sacklers of $4.55 billion, including a $225 million federal settlement, to be paid out over roughly nine years. Under the new offer, the Sacklers would pay a total of $5.5 billion, with an additional contribution of up to $500 million, contingent on the sale of their international pharmaceutical companies. The Sacklers would have 18 years to make payments of the additional $1 billion. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9883028864860535}
The bankruptcy plan requires that the Sackler money, plus billions more from Purdue, be given to funds for states, municipalities and tribes dedicated to the treatment and prevention of opioid addiction, and to compensate victims. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6600928902626038}
Known as “the Nine,” the holdouts, including Connecticut, Washington, California and Maryland, have been at the mediation table with Purdue and the Sacklers since January. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8862001895904541}
While negotiations continue, a stay against all litigation against both Purdue and the Sacklers, which has been in place since September 2019, was extended this week and is now set to expire on March 3. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.39408329129219055}
A representative of one branch of the family, descendants of Mortimer Sackler, declined to comment; representatives of another branch, descendants of Raymond Sackler, did not respond to a comment request. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8806316256523132}
Judge Chapman has requested an extension of the deadline for mediation talks through February 28. Noting that the “unanimous acceptance” that the Sacklers require has not yet been achieved, she suggested that further talks could either reach that end or craft a different set of plans that would not necessitate unanimity. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8529371023178101}
In the meantime, Purdue, whose plan was rejected by U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon in December, is pursuing an appeal in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Oral arguments are expected in April. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7173078656196594}
Purdue released a statement saying: “We remain focused on achieving our goal of providing urgently needed funds to the American people for opioid crisis abatement. We believe a global settlement is the swiftest and most cost-effective exit path from Chapter 11 and we will continue working to build consensus as we proceed through the appeal process with the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9097821116447449}

Members of the billionaire Sackler family have sweetened their cash offer to settle thousands of opioid-related lawsuits against them and their company, Purdue Pharma, offering up to $6 billion, an increase of more than $1 billion from an earlier offer, according to a mediator’s report filed Friday afternoon in bankruptcy court. Evidence But the deal is not done. The Sacklers have not budged from the line they drew in the sand at the outset of the case. In exchange for their billions, they are continuing to demand an end to all civil claims against them related to Purdue and opioids, and that future such claims be prohibited. Rebuttal Legal experts and the public have criticized efforts by the Sackler family to seek personal protection from liability. It is a shield typically granted to companies seeking bankruptcy restructuring, as Purdue is, but rarely extended to owners who do not file for personal bankruptcy. Eight states and the District of Columbia refused to sign on to an earlier proposal because of the Sackler liability shields. The mediator, Judge Shelley Chapman, a federal bankruptcy judge, said in her report that a “supermajority” of those states had now agreed to the new offer. But holdouts remain and the deal is not yet done. The earlier offer included a pledge from the Sacklers of $4.55 billion, including a $225 million federal settlement, to be paid out over roughly nine years. Under the new offer, the Sacklers would pay a total of $5.5 billion, with an additional contribution of up to $500 million, contingent on the sale of their international pharmaceutical companies. The Sacklers would have 18 years to make payments of the additional $1 billion. The bankruptcy plan requires that the Sackler money, plus billions more from Purdue, be given to funds for states, municipalities and tribes dedicated to the treatment and prevention of opioid addiction, and to compensate victims. Known as “the Nine,” the holdouts, including Connecticut, Washington, California and Maryland, have been at the mediation table with Purdue and the Sacklers since January. While negotiations continue, a stay against all litigation against both Purdue and the Sacklers, which has been in place since September 2019, was extended this week and is now set to expire on March 3. A representative of one branch of the family, descendants of Mortimer Sackler, declined to comment; representatives of another branch, descendants of Raymond Sackler, did not respond to a comment request. Judge Chapman has requested an extension of the deadline for mediation talks through February 28. Noting that the “unanimous acceptance” that the Sacklers require has not yet been achieved, she suggested that further talks could either reach that end or craft a different set of plans that would not necessitate unanimity. In the meantime, Purdue, whose plan was rejected by U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon in December, is pursuing an appeal in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Oral arguments are expected in April. Purdue released a statement saying: “We remain focused on achieving our goal of providing urgently needed funds to the American people for opioid crisis abatement. We believe a global settlement is the swiftest and most cost-effective exit path from Chapter 11 and we will continue working to build consensus as we proceed through the appeal process with the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.” Evidence

nytimes\sam-waterston-law-and-order.txt

Using custom data configuration default-2bf3480c206db853

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-2bf3480c206db853\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-2bf3480c206db853\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

“Law & Order” premiered on NBC in 1990. A procedural that was really two procedurals conjoined, the first half of each episode focused on the investigation of a crime, the second on the prosecution of the accused. Among the original cast members was Michael Moriarty, who played an assistant district attorney. During the fourth season, under clouded circumstances, Moriarty left. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9585203528404236}
As Dick Wolf, who created “Law & Order,” tells it, Warren Littlefield, NBC’s president, questioned whether the show could continue. Wolf thought that it could. “I’ve got two words for you,” he says he told Littlefield. Those words? “Sam Waterston.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8257516622543335}
Waterston, who had just wrapped the NBC civil rights drama “I’ll Fly Away,” hadn’t been looking for a procedural. Having begun his career as a classical actor, he never really expected to work in television. Still, he agreed — in the short-term, anyway — signing a one-year contract in 1994 to play the principled assistant district attorney Jack McCoy. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8986294269561768}
“I didn’t think I’d be there long,” Waterston recently told me. He stayed for 16 seasons. In those years, “Law & Order” became a cultural touchstone and an extensive franchise (back before seemingly every procedural franchised). Waterston — as his hair silvered and his face cragged — remained its dependable face. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7943752408027649}
When NBC canceled the show, in 2010 — its ratings by then less than half of its early ’00s peak — he went back to classical theater and took prominent roles in Aaron Sorkin’s HBO media drama, “The Newsroom,” and in the Jane Fonda-Lily Tomlin Netflix comedy “Grace and Frankie.” He made a few movies. And then in a twist that even a late-season “Law & Order” writers room might have considered too much, “Law & Order” suddenly returned after a decade away, with Waterston’s McCoy along for the prosecutorial ride. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9873489141464233}
The first episode will premiere on Feb. 24 on NBC (and be available to stream the following day on Peacock and Hulu). And on March 3, Hulu will debut “The Dropout,” a limited series based on the Theranos scandal, in which Waterston plays the former Secretary of State George Shultz. The seventh and final season of “Grace and Frankie” arrives in April, which means that Waterston will have three shows on simultaneously, showcasing his talents for drama, sophisticated impersonation and light comedy. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9871581196784973}
“This is a really sweet time,” he said, as he tidily sipped a bowl of chicken soup. “I’ve always wanted to prove that I can do all kinds of things.” His motto, he told me, is a lyric from the musical “A Chorus Line” about an actor’s desire to do it all: “I can do that! I can do that!” Now he has. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6627838611602783}
This was on a recent weekday afternoon. The forecast had predicted rain — correctly. But Waterston, 81, had still insisted on meeting in Central Park, armed against the wintry mix in a broad-brimmed hat, a leather jacket and an umbrella that he mostly left furled. He had brought me and a photographer to the Delacorte Theater, the longtime home of Shakespeare in the Park and the site of his early career triumphs: Benedick in “Much Ado About Nothing,” the Duke in “Measure for Measure,” Hamlet in “Hamlet.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9730821847915649}
“His love of that place, you could feel it very tangibly,” Michael Greif, who directed him there in “The Tempest,” told me. It was true. Waterston strode around stage — cheeks reddening, eyes crinkling — like it was summer already, seeming to see not the slush but the work he had done over the past 60 years. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.702651858329773}
“The Delacorte just got the green light to be completely rebuilt,” he said in a nearby Italian restaurant, where we had retreated, damply. “It’s simply too great.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6756235957145691}
Waterston — plain-spoken, twinkly, wistful — has never needed much in the way of renovation, though he has reinvented himself as an actor several times over. His trip to the Delacorte suggested a man trying to trace a through-line in a hectic career. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6166162490844727}
“What’s cool about this age is that you can look back at all that and appreciate that it actually was worth doing,” he said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5888839364051819}
Precocious, he started early, playing a small part in a play directed by his father, who taught at a preparatory school in northwest Massachusetts. At Yale, he continued acting; he can still recall a magical night in which he played Lucky in “Waiting for Godot” and felt that he and the audience “were in this kind of incredible bubble of communication and understanding of each other.” (This was after the Yale Daily News had argued he was too smart for the part, Waterston recalled.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9641126394271851}
He couldn’t imagine a career in show business — “a crazy business,” he called it. At Yale, he studied more sensible subjects like French and history. He spent a year at the Sorbonne. But somehow he couldn’t stop himself. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8756971955299377}
“It’s endless fun,” he said. “When you compare it to other kinds of work, why would you want to do anything else?” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4392758309841156}
At first the roles that came to him were mostly comic, owing perhaps to his gangling figure and pilgrim looks — long face, sharp nose, superb eyebrows. He looks a lot like a handsome Abraham Lincoln. Waterston disputes the “handsome” part. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7287797331809998}
Dramatic roles came a few years later. Then there were movies, then television, where he often played parts based on real people — Lincoln and others. (“People knew by then that I like to do Shakespeare. And if I liked to do Shakespeare, I must be serious,” he said.) Even as he angled to show his range, some constants remained, like a keen interest in characters in the midst of a moral quandary and a flair for the theatrical leavened by a natural gravitas. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9827128648757935}
“For all his training, he has this incredible ability to be quiet onscreen,” said Elizabeth Meriwether, the showrunner of “The Dropout.” “You can tell he’s thinking onscreen, which is really rare.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7343164086341858}
And no matter the role, he seemed like a man you could trust. Stephen Colbert at one point introduced him as “the most reasonable seeming man in America.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7362436652183533}
“Law & Order” came around just as he was worrying how we would pay for four college educations. (He has one child, the actor James Waterston, with his first wife, Barbara Rutledge Johns; and three children, the actresses Elisabeth Waterston and Katherine Waterston and the filmmaker Graham Waterston, with his current wife, Lynn Louisa Woodruff.) The salary was decent and the show filmed in New York City, not too far from his Connecticut farmhouse. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9453282952308655}
“It was just exactly the right moment,” he said. “And it kept me out of trouble. Kept me from doing really dumb stuff.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4009917080402374}
What dumb stuff, exactly? {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8345571756362915}
“Well, who knows what the dumb stuff would have been,” he said. “But we all know that there’s a lot of dumb stuff.” {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.2722378075122833}
Of course, “Law & Order” did more than preclude Waterston’s midlife crisis. Popular, influential and respectful of its audience, it made stars of many of its cast members. Even its scene break sound effect — the gavel-like “dun-dun” — became famous. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5175880193710327}
Within a decade, it had birthed a litter of spinoffs, including one show, “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” that went on to displace “Gunsmoke” as the longest running television drama ever. (If there’s one thing America loves more than crime, it seems, it’s sex crime.) It helped to reestablish New York City as a viable hub for scripted series, drawing on its deep bench of theater actors. Everyone who’s anyone can list at least one “Law & Order” credit in a Playbill bio. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9319361448287964}
The two-part format of “Law & Order,” which Wolf has described as a murder mystery followed by a moral mystery, proved indestructible. Every member of the original cast departed and still “Law & Order” kept going. (Even after cancellation, the original never really left. Syndicated episodes ran for years on TNT and later seasons can now be streamed on Peacock.) Still, certain characters — Waterston’s McCoy, Jerry Orbach’s Lennie Briscoe (12 seasons), S. Epatha Merkerson’s Anita Van Buren (17 seasons) — became metonyms for the show itself: hardworking, upstanding, bent on justice. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9458078145980835}
The format depends on fixed structures and rhythms. In the early seasons, McCoy had similar scenes in nearly every episode: cross-examinations, in-chambers meeting, closing arguments. That could have made for repetitiveness, but in Waterston’s hands, the formula rarely felt formulaic. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9551715850830078}
“He makes the role and the words unendingly interesting,” Wolf told me in an email. “That takes a level of skill and humanism that not many people possess.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.518426775932312}
After 12 seasons, the pace had worn him down, and he was happy enough, in 2007, to move into the less demanding role of district attorney, leaving the trial scenes to younger actors. Sometimes, during those late seasons, Waterston regretted not leaving altogether. “I wondered if I had stayed too long at the fair,” he said. Then the show did the leaving for him. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9595264196395874}
Yet, when “Law & Order” came back, so did Waterston — partly as a courtesy to Wolf, partly as a kind of victory lap. “It’s nice to come back and just witness the thing we made,” Waterston said. Walking through the rebuilt sets, now housed in Long Island City, felt like a waking dream, he said. (Still, as in the ’90s, he has signed only a one-year contract.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6636284589767456}
Anthony Anderson, a veteran of earlier seasons, has also returned, but otherwise the co-stars — including Hugh Dancy and Odelya Halevi as the assistant district attorneys — are all new. Halevi grew up watching Waterston; she used to pretend she was “the female McCoy,” she wrote in an email. When she arrived on set — excited, nervous, occasionally forgetting her lines — he reminded her that they were there to have fun. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9527987837791443}
For Waterston, a lot of the fun has been in that moral mystery Wolf described, in the ways in which each episode’s crime connects to a pertinent social issue. “We’ve done three shows now,” Waterston told me happily as he finished his soup. “Every one of them is about something that’s tearing this place apart. And in the current atmosphere, I think it’s pretty darn cool.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9572679400444031}
The current atmosphere includes eroded trust in government institutions, particularly the police. While some viewers would probably argue the point, Waterston believes that a critique of the police was embedded within “Law & Order” all along. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.4808458685874939}
“If you go back and look at how the cops behaved in the past, there were plenty of times when the audience was invited to disapprove of how they were behaving,” he said. “Now, there’s more.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.48547837138175964}
The show addresses this tension in its season premiere. Halfway through the episode, District Attorney Jack McCoy appears — his voice reedier, his hair and eyebrows more silver — telling a younger colleague, “Like it or not, the big bad police department is our partner.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8688963651657104}
After all of these years, this seems like the kind of scene Waterston could play in his sleep, or a fitful doze at the very least. But he can’t work that way. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.32350313663482666}
“I guess there would be a way to just put on the old suit,” he said. “But I think it’s good for you as an actor — and it’s my nature anyway — to be on the edge of uncertainty.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.2425955832004547}
Besides, Waterston has changed in the intervening decade — grown older, welcomed more grandchildren — which means that Jack McCoy might have changed a little, too. Think of it as one more mystery, maybe the ultimate mystery, for this revived “Law & Order.” Waterston is already on the case. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8609828352928162}
“If all the questions about how to play Jack McCoy are resolved and settled and done with,” he said, “why do it?” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5380271077156067}

“Law & Order” premiered on NBC in 1990. A procedural that was really two procedurals conjoined, the first half of each episode focused on the investigation of a crime, the second on the prosecution of the accused. Among the original cast members was Michael Moriarty, who played an assistant district attorney. During the fourth season, under clouded circumstances, Moriarty left. As Dick Wolf, who created “Law & Order,” tells it, Warren Littlefield, NBC’s president, questioned whether the show could continue. Wolf thought that it could. “I’ve got two words for you,” he says he told Littlefield. Those words? “Sam Waterston.” Waterston, who had just wrapped the NBC civil rights drama “I’ll Fly Away,” hadn’t been looking for a procedural. Having begun his career as a classical actor, he never really expected to work in television. Still, he agreed — in the short-term, anyway — signing a one-year contract in 1994 to play the principled assistant district attorney Jack McCoy. “I didn’t think I’d be there long,” Waterston recently told me. He stayed for 16 seasons. In those years, “Law & Order” became a cultural touchstone and an extensive franchise (back before seemingly every procedural franchised). Waterston — as his hair silvered and his face cragged — remained its dependable face. When NBC canceled the show, in 2010 — its ratings by then less than half of its early ’00s peak — he went back to classical theater and took prominent roles in Aaron Sorkin’s HBO media drama, “The Newsroom,” and in the Jane Fonda-Lily Tomlin Netflix comedy “Grace and Frankie.” He made a few movies. And then in a twist that even a late-season “Law & Order” writers room might have considered too much, “Law & Order” suddenly returned after a decade away, with Waterston’s McCoy along for the prosecutorial ride. The first episode will premiere on Feb. 24 on NBC (and be available to stream the following day on Peacock and Hulu). And on March 3, Hulu will debut “The Dropout,” a limited series based on the Theranos scandal, in which Waterston plays the former Secretary of State George Shultz. The seventh and final season of “Grace and Frankie” arrives in April, which means that Waterston will have three shows on simultaneously, showcasing his talents for drama, sophisticated impersonation and light comedy. “This is a really sweet time,” he said, as he tidily sipped a bowl of chicken soup. “I’ve always wanted to prove that I can do all kinds of things.” His motto, he told me, is a lyric from the musical “A Chorus Line” about an actor’s desire to do it all: “I can do that! I can do that!” Now he has. This was on a recent weekday afternoon. The forecast had predicted rain — correctly. But Waterston, 81, had still insisted on meeting in Central Park, armed against the wintry mix in a broad-brimmed hat, a leather jacket and an umbrella that he mostly left furled. He had brought me and a photographer to the Delacorte Theater, the longtime home of Shakespeare in the Park and the site of his early career triumphs: Benedick in “Much Ado About Nothing,” the Duke in “Measure for Measure,” Hamlet in “Hamlet.” “His love of that place, you could feel it very tangibly,” Michael Greif, who directed him there in “The Tempest,” told me. It was true. Waterston strode around stage — cheeks reddening, eyes crinkling — like it was summer already, seeming to see not the slush but the work he had done over the past 60 years. “The Delacorte just got the green light to be completely rebuilt,” he said in a nearby Italian restaurant, where we had retreated, damply. “It’s simply too great.” Waterston — plain-spoken, twinkly, wistful — has never needed much in the way of renovation, though he has reinvented himself as an actor several times over. His trip to the Delacorte suggested a man trying to trace a through-line in a hectic career. Evidence “What’s cool about this age is that you can look back at all that and appreciate that it actually was worth doing,” he said. Claim Precocious, he started early, playing a small part in a play directed by his father, who taught at a preparatory school in northwest Massachusetts. At Yale, he continued acting; he can still recall a magical night in which he played Lucky in “Waiting for Godot” and felt that he and the audience “were in this kind of incredible bubble of communication and understanding of each other.” (This was after the Yale Daily News had argued he was too smart for the part, Waterston recalled.) He couldn’t imagine a career in show business — “a crazy business,” he called it. At Yale, he studied more sensible subjects like French and history. He spent a year at the Sorbonne. But somehow he couldn’t stop himself. Evidence “It’s endless fun,” he said. “When you compare it to other kinds of work, why would you want to do anything else?” Claim At first the roles that came to him were mostly comic, owing perhaps to his gangling figure and pilgrim looks — long face, sharp nose, superb eyebrows. He looks a lot like a handsome Abraham Lincoln. Waterston disputes the “handsome” part. Dramatic roles came a few years later. Then there were movies, then television, where he often played parts based on real people — Lincoln and others. (“People knew by then that I like to do Shakespeare. And if I liked to do Shakespeare, I must be serious,” he said.) Even as he angled to show his range, some constants remained, like a keen interest in characters in the midst of a moral quandary and a flair for the theatrical leavened by a natural gravitas. “For all his training, he has this incredible ability to be quiet onscreen,” said Elizabeth Meriwether, the showrunner of “The Dropout.” “You can tell he’s thinking onscreen, which is really rare.” And no matter the role, he seemed like a man you could trust. Stephen Colbert at one point introduced him as “the most reasonable seeming man in America.” “Law & Order” came around just as he was worrying how we would pay for four college educations. (He has one child, the actor James Waterston, with his first wife, Barbara Rutledge Johns; and three children, the actresses Elisabeth Waterston and Katherine Waterston and the filmmaker Graham Waterston, with his current wife, Lynn Louisa Woodruff.) The salary was decent and the show filmed in New York City, not too far from his Connecticut farmhouse. “It was just exactly the right moment,” he said. “And it kept me out of trouble. Kept me from doing really dumb stuff.” Evidence What dumb stuff, exactly? Claim “Well, who knows what the dumb stuff would have been,” he said. “But we all know that there’s a lot of dumb stuff.” Counterclaim Of course, “Law & Order” did more than preclude Waterston’s midlife crisis. Popular, influential and respectful of its audience, it made stars of many of its cast members. Even its scene break sound effect — the gavel-like “dun-dun” — became famous. Within a decade, it had birthed a litter of spinoffs, including one show, “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” that went on to displace “Gunsmoke” as the longest running television drama ever. (If there’s one thing America loves more than crime, it seems, it’s sex crime.) It helped to reestablish New York City as a viable hub for scripted series, drawing on its deep bench of theater actors. Everyone who’s anyone can list at least one “Law & Order” credit in a Playbill bio. The two-part format of “Law & Order,” which Wolf has described as a murder mystery followed by a moral mystery, proved indestructible. Every member of the original cast departed and still “Law & Order” kept going. (Even after cancellation, the original never really left. Syndicated episodes ran for years on TNT and later seasons can now be streamed on Peacock.) Still, certain characters — Waterston’s McCoy, Jerry Orbach’s Lennie Briscoe (12 seasons), S. Epatha Merkerson’s Anita Van Buren (17 seasons) — became metonyms for the show itself: hardworking, upstanding, bent on justice. The format depends on fixed structures and rhythms. In the early seasons, McCoy had similar scenes in nearly every episode: cross-examinations, in-chambers meeting, closing arguments. That could have made for repetitiveness, but in Waterston’s hands, the formula rarely felt formulaic. “He makes the role and the words unendingly interesting,” Wolf told me in an email. “That takes a level of skill and humanism that not many people possess.” After 12 seasons, the pace had worn him down, and he was happy enough, in 2007, to move into the less demanding role of district attorney, leaving the trial scenes to younger actors. Sometimes, during those late seasons, Waterston regretted not leaving altogether. “I wondered if I had stayed too long at the fair,” he said. Then the show did the leaving for him. Yet, when “Law & Order” came back, so did Waterston — partly as a courtesy to Wolf, partly as a kind of victory lap. “It’s nice to come back and just witness the thing we made,” Waterston said. Walking through the rebuilt sets, now housed in Long Island City, felt like a waking dream, he said. (Still, as in the ’90s, he has signed only a one-year contract.) Anthony Anderson, a veteran of earlier seasons, has also returned, but otherwise the co-stars — including Hugh Dancy and Odelya Halevi as the assistant district attorneys — are all new. Halevi grew up watching Waterston; she used to pretend she was “the female McCoy,” she wrote in an email. When she arrived on set — excited, nervous, occasionally forgetting her lines — he reminded her that they were there to have fun. For Waterston, a lot of the fun has been in that moral mystery Wolf described, in the ways in which each episode’s crime connects to a pertinent social issue. “We’ve done three shows now,” Waterston told me happily as he finished his soup. “Every one of them is about something that’s tearing this place apart. And in the current atmosphere, I think it’s pretty darn cool.” Evidence The current atmosphere includes eroded trust in government institutions, particularly the police. While some viewers would probably argue the point, Waterston believes that a critique of the police was embedded within “Law & Order” all along. Counterclaim “If you go back and look at how the cops behaved in the past, there were plenty of times when the audience was invited to disapprove of how they were behaving,” he said. “Now, there’s more.” The show addresses this tension in its season premiere. Halfway through the episode, District Attorney Jack McCoy appears — his voice reedier, his hair and eyebrows more silver — telling a younger colleague, “Like it or not, the big bad police department is our partner.” Evidence After all of these years, this seems like the kind of scene Waterston could play in his sleep, or a fitful doze at the very least. But he can’t work that way. Claim “I guess there would be a way to just put on the old suit,” he said. “But I think it’s good for you as an actor — and it’s my nature anyway — to be on the edge of uncertainty.” Besides, Waterston has changed in the intervening decade — grown older, welcomed more grandchildren — which means that Jack McCoy might have changed a little, too. Think of it as one more mystery, maybe the ultimate mystery, for this revived “Law & Order.” Waterston is already on the case. Evidence “If all the questions about how to play Jack McCoy are resolved and settled and done with,” he said, “why do it?” Claim

nytimes\san-francisco-school-board-parents.txt

Using custom data configuration default-fc7cedae44f55900

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-fc7cedae44f55900\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-fc7cedae44f55900\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

SAN FRANCISCO — As Election Day approached, a flurry of messages flashed across the phones of San Francisco’s Chinese American community. “Remember to vote,” said one message in Chinese from a campaign organizer, Selena Chu. “And throw out the commissioners who are discriminating against us and disrespecting our community.” {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.8002067804336548}
The lopsided victory in a recall election on Tuesday that ousted three members of the San Francisco school board shook the city’s liberal establishment and was a resounding alarm of parental anger over the way the public school system handled the coronavirus pandemic. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8313977718353271}
Parents of varying ethnicities and income levels who had coalesced last year while San Francisco schools remained closed — they stayed shut for much longer than those in other large cities — organized themselves through Facebook groups and vowed to push out Board of Education members for what they saw as incompetence. They kept their promise: The three commissioners were removed by as much as 79 percent of voters, an unequivocal rejection in a city renowned for fractious politics. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.984733521938324}
For many Asian Americans in the city, especially the large Chinese American community, the results were an affirmation of the group’s voting power, coming with a high degree of organizing, turnout and intensity not seen in many years. In an election where every registered voter received a ballot, overall turnout was relatively low at 26 percent; turnout among the 30,000 people who requested Chinese-language ballots was significantly higher at 37 percent. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9825447201728821}
In an overwhelmingly liberal city, Asian American voters have sided with Democrats for decades. But in recent years, a growing number of Chinese residents, many of them born in mainland China, have become a moderating political force. Most Chinese residents in the city are registered as independents and, as Tuesday’s election appeared to show, they are not afraid to buck some of the more liberal elements of the Democratic Party. It is a pattern that has emerged in other cities, like New York, that are largely Democratic with significant Asian American populations. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9701905250549316}
“They are absolutely up for grabs,” David Lee, a political science lecturer at San Francisco State University, said of Asian American voters in the city. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4252033531665802}
In Tuesday’s election, two issues in particular motivated Chinese American voters. The Board of Education had voted to put in place a lottery admission system at the highly selective Lowell High School, replacing an admission process that primarily selected students with the highest grades and test scores. Lowell, whose long list of notable alumni includes Justice Stephen G. Breyer, for decades had represented what one community member described as the “gateway to the American dream.” The introduction of the lottery system has reduced the number of Asian and white ninth graders at Lowell by around one-quarter and increased Black and Latino ninth graders by more than 40 percent. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9928527474403381}
Chinese voters were also upset by tweets by Alison Collins, one of the recalled school board members, that were unearthed during the campaign. Ms. Collins said Asian Americans used “white supremacist thinking to assimilate and ‘get ahead.’” She went on to compare Asian Americans to slaves who had the advantage of working inside a slave owner’s home instead of doing more grueling labor in the fields, using asterisks to mask an anti-Black racial slur. The tweets reinforced a sentiment among many Chinese voters of being taken for granted, underrepresented and insulted, people involved in the recall campaign said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9906445741653442}
Asian American voters also said they were motivated by issues beyond the actions of the board: The number of high-profile attacks against Asian Americans, many of them older, has traumatized the community. And many Chinese-owned businesses were suffering the effects of pandemic closures, especially in Chinatown. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.822799026966095}
“We are losing faith in government,” said Bayard Fong, president of the Chinese American Democratic Club. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4807419776916504}
Asian Americans make up about 36 percent of San Francisco’s population, one of the largest such communities in a major city, but they are an incredibly diverse group that includes Filipinos, Indians, Vietnamese and Thais and features different economic, linguistic and ethnic backgrounds. Chinese Americans are by far the largest Asian group, making up 23 percent of San Francisco’s population. Forty percent of the population is white, 15 percent Latino and 6 percent Black. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9595192074775696}
The ouster of the three board members will elevate the only Chinese American member of the seven-person board to the position of president. And it puts Mayor London Breed in the delicate position of appointing three replacement members who will be acceptable to the parents now closely watching the process. Recall campaigners say they hope more Asian Americans will be appointed to the board. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9676396250724792}
Autumn Looijen, who with her partner, Siva Raj, organized signature gathering and initiated the recall campaign, described the Chinese American community as crucial to the recall’s success. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6657589673995972}
“They were the backbone of our volunteer efforts,” Ms. Looijen said. “They have been really powering this campaign from the beginning.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6348205804824829}
During the campaign, organizers used WeChat, the Chinese-language messaging app, to offer everything from detailed instructions on how to fill out a ballot to organizing the deployment of volunteers in Chinatown, where lion dances and drumming exhorted residents to vote. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.823363721370697}
“We shall be silent no more,” said a flier in English and Chinese handed out by the Chinese American Democratic Club. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6098790764808655}
Parents who campaigned for the recall described an awakening in the Chinese American community by people who had been largely apolitical until now. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5539106726646423}
Ms. Chu, the woman who sent the WeChat message urging people to vote, said she grew up with parents who advised her to remain quiet if she felt she was being treated unfairly. Many first-generation immigrants still feel that way, she said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9401031136512756}
Now a mother of two children in the San Francisco public school system, Ms. Chu felt compelled, for the first time, to become actively involved in an election. Her hands hurt, she said, from texting so much on WeChat during the campaign. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6197997331619263}
She was motivated by a sense of being punished and pilloried for working hard and striving. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7779668569564819}
“This year a lot of parents are telling me, ‘We are done with being scapegoats,’” Ms. Chu said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.48509734869003296}
“We are still being looked at as foreigners,” she said. “We are Americans. You have to give us respect.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5386137366294861}
She called the recall election a milestone for the Asian American community. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7665736675262451}
“They finally understand the power of their vote,” she said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7547577023506165}
Crucial to the organizing efforts was Ann Hsu, a Beijing-born entrepreneur with decades of experience in starting up and managing companies in both China and the United States. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6412376761436462}
Ms. Hsu used her management experience to organize volunteers and set campaign strategies. She ignored the English-language media and instead focused tightly on Chinese-language newspapers, YouTube channels and advertising. She and her volunteers distributed thousands of yellow shopping bags emblazoned with recall messages and gave them out to older Chinese residents. She set up a task force that registered 560 residents, almost all of them Asian Americans, to vote. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9932942986488342}
Using WeChat to organize her operations had the added advantage of breaking a language barrier: She speaks Mandarin while other residents are more comfortable in Cantonese. The written messages could be understood by all. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6817789673805237}
Ms. Hsu’s voice fills with emotion when she discusses the issue of Lowell, which she said was the primary motivation for jumping into politics. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5612946152687073}
“When you came for Lowell, you came for the Asians,” she said in an interview on Wednesday. “We are going to stand up and say no more, no!” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6534080505371094}
The future admissions process at Lowell remains unclear — the lottery system will remain in place for students entering in the fall, but the board has not made a decision for admissions beyond next year. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.38009363412857056}
Ms. Hsu says Lowell is not directly personal for her. Her two teenage boys are at another school in the San Francisco public school district. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8014995455741882}
But she saw in the board’s decisions a deep sense that the aspirations of Asian American residents were being ignored. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8678162097930908}
The debate over admission to elite public high schools has galvanized Asian parents in other cities, notably New York. In both San Francisco and New York, the issue cleaves liberal voters who are torn between a desire to maintain a system that has traditionally benefited high-achieving students from poorer, often immigrant, backgrounds but at the same time left behind Black and Latino students. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8890226483345032}
In New York, where Black and Latino students are disproportionately underrepresented in the elite public high schools, the issue of school segregation rose to the fore during New York’s mayoral election last year. Left-leaning candidates called for a fundamental overhaul of the admissions standards while centrist candidates called for its retention. Among those who promised to keep the test was Eric Adams, the current mayor. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9232256412506104}
Ms. Collins, the board member who was criticized for her tweets, said during the campaign that she had “desegregated” Lowell. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5086396336555481}
In the wake of the lopsided recall, political analysts are weighing whether the energy and fervor of the campaign will carry over into other elections both in the city and nationally. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5941150188446045}
Mike Chen, a board member of the Edwin M. Lee Asian Pacific Democratic Club, said the results were remarkable — “nobody in the city can agree 80 percent on anything.” But he said he would “heavily caution” making predictions about other campaigns based off a single election with relatively low turnout. San Francisco had a very particular set of issues that pushed parents over the edge, he said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9545862674713135}
“People have been trying to make extrapolations: What does this mean for school board elections in Ohio or Virginia?” he said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.47024455666542053}
“We had this very particular instance,” he continued. “We had very visible examples of incompetence, bad governance and malfeasance. Most people could objectively observe the decisions that were happening last year and think, ‘This is really messed up.’” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8259553909301758}

SAN FRANCISCO — As Election Day approached, a flurry of messages flashed across the phones of San Francisco’s Chinese American community. “Remember to vote,” said one message in Chinese from a campaign organizer, Selena Chu. “And throw out the commissioners who are discriminating against us and disrespecting our community.” Lead The lopsided victory in a recall election on Tuesday that ousted three members of the San Francisco school board shook the city’s liberal establishment and was a resounding alarm of parental anger over the way the public school system handled the coronavirus pandemic. Parents of varying ethnicities and income levels who had coalesced last year while San Francisco schools remained closed — they stayed shut for much longer than those in other large cities — organized themselves through Facebook groups and vowed to push out Board of Education members for what they saw as incompetence. They kept their promise: The three commissioners were removed by as much as 79 percent of voters, an unequivocal rejection in a city renowned for fractious politics. For many Asian Americans in the city, especially the large Chinese American community, the results were an affirmation of the group’s voting power, coming with a high degree of organizing, turnout and intensity not seen in many years. In an election where every registered voter received a ballot, overall turnout was relatively low at 26 percent; turnout among the 30,000 people who requested Chinese-language ballots was significantly higher at 37 percent. In an overwhelmingly liberal city, Asian American voters have sided with Democrats for decades. But in recent years, a growing number of Chinese residents, many of them born in mainland China, have become a moderating political force. Most Chinese residents in the city are registered as independents and, as Tuesday’s election appeared to show, they are not afraid to buck some of the more liberal elements of the Democratic Party. It is a pattern that has emerged in other cities, like New York, that are largely Democratic with significant Asian American populations. “They are absolutely up for grabs,” David Lee, a political science lecturer at San Francisco State University, said of Asian American voters in the city. In Tuesday’s election, two issues in particular motivated Chinese American voters. The Board of Education had voted to put in place a lottery admission system at the highly selective Lowell High School, replacing an admission process that primarily selected students with the highest grades and test scores. Lowell, whose long list of notable alumni includes Justice Stephen G. Breyer, for decades had represented what one community member described as the “gateway to the American dream.” The introduction of the lottery system has reduced the number of Asian and white ninth graders at Lowell by around one-quarter and increased Black and Latino ninth graders by more than 40 percent. Chinese voters were also upset by tweets by Alison Collins, one of the recalled school board members, that were unearthed during the campaign. Ms. Collins said Asian Americans used “white supremacist thinking to assimilate and ‘get ahead.’” She went on to compare Asian Americans to slaves who had the advantage of working inside a slave owner’s home instead of doing more grueling labor in the fields, using asterisks to mask an anti-Black racial slur. The tweets reinforced a sentiment among many Chinese voters of being taken for granted, underrepresented and insulted, people involved in the recall campaign said. Asian American voters also said they were motivated by issues beyond the actions of the board: The number of high-profile attacks against Asian Americans, many of them older, has traumatized the community. And many Chinese-owned businesses were suffering the effects of pandemic closures, especially in Chinatown. Evidence “We are losing faith in government,” said Bayard Fong, president of the Chinese American Democratic Club. Claim Asian Americans make up about 36 percent of San Francisco’s population, one of the largest such communities in a major city, but they are an incredibly diverse group that includes Filipinos, Indians, Vietnamese and Thais and features different economic, linguistic and ethnic backgrounds. Chinese Americans are by far the largest Asian group, making up 23 percent of San Francisco’s population. Forty percent of the population is white, 15 percent Latino and 6 percent Black. The ouster of the three board members will elevate the only Chinese American member of the seven-person board to the position of president. And it puts Mayor London Breed in the delicate position of appointing three replacement members who will be acceptable to the parents now closely watching the process. Recall campaigners say they hope more Asian Americans will be appointed to the board. Autumn Looijen, who with her partner, Siva Raj, organized signature gathering and initiated the recall campaign, described the Chinese American community as crucial to the recall’s success. “They were the backbone of our volunteer efforts,” Ms. Looijen said. “They have been really powering this campaign from the beginning.” During the campaign, organizers used WeChat, the Chinese-language messaging app, to offer everything from detailed instructions on how to fill out a ballot to organizing the deployment of volunteers in Chinatown, where lion dances and drumming exhorted residents to vote. “We shall be silent no more,” said a flier in English and Chinese handed out by the Chinese American Democratic Club. Evidence Parents who campaigned for the recall described an awakening in the Chinese American community by people who had been largely apolitical until now. Claim Ms. Chu, the woman who sent the WeChat message urging people to vote, said she grew up with parents who advised her to remain quiet if she felt she was being treated unfairly. Many first-generation immigrants still feel that way, she said. Now a mother of two children in the San Francisco public school system, Ms. Chu felt compelled, for the first time, to become actively involved in an election. Her hands hurt, she said, from texting so much on WeChat during the campaign. Evidence She was motivated by a sense of being punished and pilloried for working hard and striving. Claim “This year a lot of parents are telling me, ‘We are done with being scapegoats,’” Ms. Chu said. “We are still being looked at as foreigners,” she said. “We are Americans. You have to give us respect.” Evidence She called the recall election a milestone for the Asian American community. “They finally understand the power of their vote,” she said. Crucial to the organizing efforts was Ann Hsu, a Beijing-born entrepreneur with decades of experience in starting up and managing companies in both China and the United States. Claim Ms. Hsu used her management experience to organize volunteers and set campaign strategies. She ignored the English-language media and instead focused tightly on Chinese-language newspapers, YouTube channels and advertising. She and her volunteers distributed thousands of yellow shopping bags emblazoned with recall messages and gave them out to older Chinese residents. She set up a task force that registered 560 residents, almost all of them Asian Americans, to vote. Using WeChat to organize her operations had the added advantage of breaking a language barrier: She speaks Mandarin while other residents are more comfortable in Cantonese. The written messages could be understood by all. Evidence Ms. Hsu’s voice fills with emotion when she discusses the issue of Lowell, which she said was the primary motivation for jumping into politics. Claim “When you came for Lowell, you came for the Asians,” she said in an interview on Wednesday. “We are going to stand up and say no more, no!” Evidence The future admissions process at Lowell remains unclear — the lottery system will remain in place for students entering in the fall, but the board has not made a decision for admissions beyond next year. Claim Ms. Hsu says Lowell is not directly personal for her. Her two teenage boys are at another school in the San Francisco public school district. Evidence But she saw in the board’s decisions a deep sense that the aspirations of Asian American residents were being ignored. Rebuttal The debate over admission to elite public high schools has galvanized Asian parents in other cities, notably New York. In both San Francisco and New York, the issue cleaves liberal voters who are torn between a desire to maintain a system that has traditionally benefited high-achieving students from poorer, often immigrant, backgrounds but at the same time left behind Black and Latino students. In New York, where Black and Latino students are disproportionately underrepresented in the elite public high schools, the issue of school segregation rose to the fore during New York’s mayoral election last year. Left-leaning candidates called for a fundamental overhaul of the admissions standards while centrist candidates called for its retention. Among those who promised to keep the test was Eric Adams, the current mayor. Evidence Ms. Collins, the board member who was criticized for her tweets, said during the campaign that she had “desegregated” Lowell. In the wake of the lopsided recall, political analysts are weighing whether the energy and fervor of the campaign will carry over into other elections both in the city and nationally. Claim Mike Chen, a board member of the Edwin M. Lee Asian Pacific Democratic Club, said the results were remarkable — “nobody in the city can agree 80 percent on anything.” But he said he would “heavily caution” making predictions about other campaigns based off a single election with relatively low turnout. San Francisco had a very particular set of issues that pushed parents over the edge, he said. Evidence “People have been trying to make extrapolations: What does this mean for school board elections in Ohio or Virginia?” he said. Claim “We had this very particular instance,” he continued. “We had very visible examples of incompetence, bad governance and malfeasance. Most people could objectively observe the decisions that were happening last year and think, ‘This is really messed up.’” Evidence

nytimes\sanctions-russia-ukraine.txt

Using custom data configuration default-3d2cddd67451a3b1

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-3d2cddd67451a3b1\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-3d2cddd67451a3b1\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

There are two clashing arguments about whether the threat of economic sanctions can be effective now in deterring Russian aggression in Ukraine. One is that sanctions against Russia following the 2014 invasion of Ukraine didn’t prompt any improvement in behavior, nor did sanctions promote good behavior when imposed against Cuba, Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Venezuela. So it’s unrealistic to expect sterner sanctions to work against Russia this time. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7501688599586487}
The contrary view is that sanctions would be effective now because they could cause real economic pain. It’s the Russians themselves, oddly enough, who have expressed this view most prominently. In 2014, Alexei Kudrin, a former finance minister who is close to President Vladimir Putin, said that cutting off Russia’s access to Swift, a bank messaging network that proponents of sanctions have contemplated using as leverage, could cause Russian gross domestic product to fall 5 percent. In 2019, according to the Moscow-controlled broadcaster RT, the prime minister, Dmitri Medvedev, said that cutting off Swift access would be regarded as virtually a declaration of war. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3900166451931}
After poking around this question for a couple of days I’ve concluded that the predictions of harm to Russia from a Swift cutoff are overblown, but sanctions can be at least somewhat effective. And even though sanctions are far from a perfect solution, they’re the only alternative to either armed conflict or acquiescence to Russian aggression. A war in Ukraine could be the biggest in Europe since 1945. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.8283987045288086}
In a hopeful sign on Tuesday, Putin said that Russia would “partially pull back troops” near the border with Ukraine and was seeking a “diplomatic path” to work out its differences with the West. On Wednesday, though, the United States and NATO said they had seen no sign of a pullback. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9844872355461121}
International relations scholars by and large support sanctions despite their so-so record to date. Nearly 90 percent of 362 scholars at U.S. universities who were surveyed in December and January favored economic sanctions in case of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to researchers at the College of William and Mary and the University of Denver. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9716320037841797}
One oddity of the debate is that a Swift cutoff, which is sometimes described as the nuclear option, would be less devastating than many Westerners — and, apparently, many Russians — seem to think. Swift, which is officially the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, is a messaging network connecting more than 11,000 financial institutions. It doesn’t move money itself but it lubricates transactions through messages that confirm the identities of senders and recipients and track that the money moves as intended. Trying to do international banking business without Swift is cumbersome and costly but not impossible. Russian banks could do business (albeit laboriously) by email, fax machine or possibly even telex, the telegraph-like system that preceded Swift and still exists vestigially. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9463632106781006}
The bigger risk to Russia would come from certain other measures that are under discussion. Most significantly, the Biden administration could simply prohibit U.S. banks from dealing with their Russian counterparts, which would make Swift access largely irrelevant. Most of the rest of the world’s banks would most likely follow suit for fear of running afoul of the United States if a transaction between them and Russia inadvertently triggered an interaction with a U.S. bank. A cutoff from Swift could be imposed sometime later to mop up some of the banking transactions that might still be occurring despite a ban imposed by allied nations. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9695925116539001}
To better understand how this would work, I spoke with Brian O’Toole, a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center and a former senior adviser to the director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the Department of the Treasury. He gave an example of a currency conversion: To turn rubles into euros, foreign-exchange dealers typically use dollars as the go-between, first exchanging the rubles for dollars and then exchanging the dollars for euros. The portion of the transaction involving dollars would usually be cleared through the United States and thus violate U.S. sanctions, O’Toole said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9805681109428406}
Railways, metals and mining, insurance and diamonds are other sectors that the United States and its allies might target with sanctions, O’Toole said. Companies in the United States and other countries could be effectively blocked from selling Russia critical components such as computer chips. The consideration of such extreme measures reflects America’s abandonment of hope that Putin can be cajoled into becoming a responsible player on the world stage. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9875813722610474}
The perfect sanction would penalize Putin and his cronies while causing no harm to ordinary Russian citizens or to the United States and its allies. Alas, such a sanction does not exist, says Emily Kilcrease, senior fellow and director of the energy, economics and security program at the Center for a New American Security in Washington. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.876865029335022}
“We do need to be willing to take some of that pain as well,” Kilcrease told me. “We’ve already used the sanctions that don’t cause us a lot of pain,” such as travel bans on Putin allies and a ban on providing technology and loans to the Russian oil and gas sector. New sanctions would hurt companies that do business with Russia and could lead to retaliation. “Western banks should be prepared for cyberattacks,” Kilcrease said. “Clearly there is a scenario here where there’s a further escalation.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9361699819564819}
Russia has braced itself for sanctions by building its stockpile of foreign-exchange reserves. Likewise the West has braced itself by, among other things, asking oil and gas producers to be prepared to raise their output if needed to offset the loss of fuel from Russia. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9810663461685181}
The West’s strategy must be a calculated combination of clarity and ambiguity, Kilcrease said. “The piece you want to be clear about is the range of options you’re considering,” she said. On the other hand, she added: “We don’t want to give him the entire playbook because then he could say, ‘Well, we can live with that.’ We want to leave room for escalation if needed.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8725400567054749}
The share of U.S. local daily newspapers owned by private equity funds increased from about 5 percent in 2002 to about 23 percent in 2019. What was the result? To find out, Michael Ewens of the California Institute of Technology and Arpit Gupta and Sabrina Howell of New York University’s Stern School of Business painstakingly built and then analyzed a database of 1,610 newspapers, 262 of which have ever been owned by private equity. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9896731376647949}
In a working paper circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research this month, Ewens, Gupta and Howell conclude that private-equity ownership leads to higher digital circulation and lower chances of newspapers’ shutting down. However, they write, “the composition of news shifts away from local governance, the number of reporters and editors falls, and participation in local elections declines.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8391649723052979}
“Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7284204363822937}
— Francis Bacon, c. 1610, “The Works of Francis Bacon,” edited by J. Spedding, R.L. Ellis and D.D. Heath (1896) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6366287469863892}

There are two clashing arguments about whether the threat of economic sanctions can be effective now in deterring Russian aggression in Ukraine. One is that sanctions against Russia following the 2014 invasion of Ukraine didn’t prompt any improvement in behavior, nor did sanctions promote good behavior when imposed against Cuba, Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Venezuela. So it’s unrealistic to expect sterner sanctions to work against Russia this time. The contrary view is that sanctions would be effective now because they could cause real economic pain. It’s the Russians themselves, oddly enough, who have expressed this view most prominently. In 2014, Alexei Kudrin, a former finance minister who is close to President Vladimir Putin, said that cutting off Russia’s access to Swift, a bank messaging network that proponents of sanctions have contemplated using as leverage, could cause Russian gross domestic product to fall 5 percent. In 2019, according to the Moscow-controlled broadcaster RT, the prime minister, Dmitri Medvedev, said that cutting off Swift access would be regarded as virtually a declaration of war. Evidence After poking around this question for a couple of days I’ve concluded that the predictions of harm to Russia from a Swift cutoff are overblown, but sanctions can be at least somewhat effective. And even though sanctions are far from a perfect solution, they’re the only alternative to either armed conflict or acquiescence to Russian aggression. A war in Ukraine could be the biggest in Europe since 1945. Concluding Statement In a hopeful sign on Tuesday, Putin said that Russia would “partially pull back troops” near the border with Ukraine and was seeking a “diplomatic path” to work out its differences with the West. On Wednesday, though, the United States and NATO said they had seen no sign of a pullback. International relations scholars by and large support sanctions despite their so-so record to date. Nearly 90 percent of 362 scholars at U.S. universities who were surveyed in December and January favored economic sanctions in case of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to researchers at the College of William and Mary and the University of Denver. One oddity of the debate is that a Swift cutoff, which is sometimes described as the nuclear option, would be less devastating than many Westerners — and, apparently, many Russians — seem to think. Swift, which is officially the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, is a messaging network connecting more than 11,000 financial institutions. It doesn’t move money itself but it lubricates transactions through messages that confirm the identities of senders and recipients and track that the money moves as intended. Trying to do international banking business without Swift is cumbersome and costly but not impossible. Russian banks could do business (albeit laboriously) by email, fax machine or possibly even telex, the telegraph-like system that preceded Swift and still exists vestigially. The bigger risk to Russia would come from certain other measures that are under discussion. Most significantly, the Biden administration could simply prohibit U.S. banks from dealing with their Russian counterparts, which would make Swift access largely irrelevant. Most of the rest of the world’s banks would most likely follow suit for fear of running afoul of the United States if a transaction between them and Russia inadvertently triggered an interaction with a U.S. bank. A cutoff from Swift could be imposed sometime later to mop up some of the banking transactions that might still be occurring despite a ban imposed by allied nations. To better understand how this would work, I spoke with Brian O’Toole, a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center and a former senior adviser to the director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the Department of the Treasury. He gave an example of a currency conversion: To turn rubles into euros, foreign-exchange dealers typically use dollars as the go-between, first exchanging the rubles for dollars and then exchanging the dollars for euros. The portion of the transaction involving dollars would usually be cleared through the United States and thus violate U.S. sanctions, O’Toole said. Railways, metals and mining, insurance and diamonds are other sectors that the United States and its allies might target with sanctions, O’Toole said. Companies in the United States and other countries could be effectively blocked from selling Russia critical components such as computer chips. The consideration of such extreme measures reflects America’s abandonment of hope that Putin can be cajoled into becoming a responsible player on the world stage. The perfect sanction would penalize Putin and his cronies while causing no harm to ordinary Russian citizens or to the United States and its allies. Alas, such a sanction does not exist, says Emily Kilcrease, senior fellow and director of the energy, economics and security program at the Center for a New American Security in Washington. “We do need to be willing to take some of that pain as well,” Kilcrease told me. “We’ve already used the sanctions that don’t cause us a lot of pain,” such as travel bans on Putin allies and a ban on providing technology and loans to the Russian oil and gas sector. New sanctions would hurt companies that do business with Russia and could lead to retaliation. “Western banks should be prepared for cyberattacks,” Kilcrease said. “Clearly there is a scenario here where there’s a further escalation.” Russia has braced itself for sanctions by building its stockpile of foreign-exchange reserves. Likewise the West has braced itself by, among other things, asking oil and gas producers to be prepared to raise their output if needed to offset the loss of fuel from Russia. The West’s strategy must be a calculated combination of clarity and ambiguity, Kilcrease said. “The piece you want to be clear about is the range of options you’re considering,” she said. On the other hand, she added: “We don’t want to give him the entire playbook because then he could say, ‘Well, we can live with that.’ We want to leave room for escalation if needed.” The share of U.S. local daily newspapers owned by private equity funds increased from about 5 percent in 2002 to about 23 percent in 2019. What was the result? To find out, Michael Ewens of the California Institute of Technology and Arpit Gupta and Sabrina Howell of New York University’s Stern School of Business painstakingly built and then analyzed a database of 1,610 newspapers, 262 of which have ever been owned by private equity. In a working paper circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research this month, Ewens, Gupta and Howell conclude that private-equity ownership leads to higher digital circulation and lower chances of newspapers’ shutting down. However, they write, “the composition of news shifts away from local governance, the number of reporters and editors falls, and participation in local elections declines.” Evidence “Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.” Claim — Francis Bacon, c. 1610, “The Works of Francis Bacon,” edited by J. Spedding, R.L. Ellis and D.D. Heath (1896) Evidence

nytimes\school-board-recall.txt

Using custom data configuration default-b2816dff2cb77508

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-b2816dff2cb77508\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-b2816dff2cb77508\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Our anxiety over the upcoming midterm and presidential elections has turned every vote, however local and peculiar, into a referendum on the future of the nation. Take last November’s governor’s race in Virginia. After the results came in for the Republican, Glenn Youngkin, hundreds of column inches were dedicated to how the result reflected a growing discontent among normally liberal voters about Covid school closures and critical race theory being taught in schools. This may have been the story of that particular election, but so many people seemed convinced that it was conclusive proof that Democrats had turned against their own party for good and would be summarily be sweeping progressives out of office in 2022 and 2024. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7642143964767456}
I am not immune to this style of political fortune telling, but what’s more interesting to me is what actually drives these predictions of doom for Democrats. Two assumptions seem to be lurking somewhere underneath the surface. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4185090661048889}
The first: School closures irreparably harmed the Democratic Party. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.9781474471092224}
The second: There is a backlash against diversity and equity measures, many of which were established after the nationwide George Floyd protests. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8702042698860168}
So on Tuesday, when the deep blue city of San Francisco recalled three ultraprogressive, equity-focused members of the school board, ousting them in stunning three-to-one votes, what are we to make of it? Is it a harbinger of coming catastrophe for Democrats? Or are we dealing with a local election with local concerns? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9261233806610107}
Was the recall the result of parents who were frustrated by the extended closures of schools even when the city had low coronavirus positivity and death rates? At times, the board members had seemed more concerned with renaming schools, including one named after Abraham Lincoln, than with figuring out a plan to reopen. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.862568736076355}
Should the blame be placed on the board’s decision to change the admission policy at the elite Lowell High School from merit-based to lottery? {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.7234640121459961}
Or is Alison Collins, the most controversial of the three school board officials who were forced out, the reason for it all? The wife of a wealthy real estate developer, she was responsible for much-publicized and seemingly anti-Asian tweets, followed by an absurd $87 million lawsuit against the city, the school district and her fellow school board members. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6885783076286316}
If you connect any one of these factors with the landslide results, you can construct various narratives about the failure of the Democratic Party — overzealous Covid restrictions, out-of-control wokeness or being oblivious to an angry class of parents who just want their kids to be able to work hard and succeed. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5820615887641907}
The school board vote reflects all of these things, of course, but not in equal proportion. Parents may have been impatient with the length of the school closures, and many may point to the strangeness of the board’s obsession with renaming schools while students were sitting at home, but the Bay Area shut down earlier than most parts of the country, and many residents here are proud of the region’s relatively low Covid toll. Attitudes about closures have changed, but this isn’t a city that’s exactly bursting with anti-mask, anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown sentiment. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8811182379722595}
That hasn’t stopped some pundits from declaring that the recall signals the end of all progressive politics, especially in places that had extended school closures. A Republican lawmaker on Fox News declared that the results signaled a coming “red wave” in the midterms. This doesn’t mean that the shuttering of schools had no effect on the vote — I’m quite certain it had a large role — but it doesn’t seem to have been the catalyst. A recall requires people to go out and get signatures, file motions and keep up a lengthy campaign. Do we really believe that San Francisco, of all places, became so radicalized against school closures that they triggered the recall in the early months of 2021? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9804258346557617}
What’s far more likely — and supported by the voting data — is that the recall was mostly brought about by a coalition of parents who were mad about the changes at Lowell. On Feb. 2, 2021, members of the school board put forth a resolution to end test-based admissions at the school permanently and to use instead the district’s standard lottery system as a way to diversify the mostly white and Asian student body. On Feb. 9 the school board voted 5 to 2 to adopt the resolution. Ten days later, two parents began the campaign to recall the three school board members. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9738985300064087}
The vote capped a year of organizing by a mostly Asian American bloc of parents and citizens. Investors provided much of the campaign’s funding. The large amount — over $2 million in total — has raised questions about whether the effort was just an attempt by Silicon Valley and Wall Street to beat back equity efforts in public schools. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9178402423858643}
But this sort of dismissal belies the actual organizing that went into the effort and the work of hundreds of volunteers who collected signatures for the recall election throughout the city. It also ignores relatively high turnout rates in Asian neighborhoods and the overwhelming majority of those residents who voted to recall. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8938341736793518}
As a resident of the Bay Area, I first came across these activists last year while waiting in line outside H Mart, a Korean grocery chain whose San Francisco location is in the southern part of the city. I go to H Mart quite regularly, and for months, nearly every time I went, I would see the same people — mostly elderly Chinese American men and women — standing out front with their fliers and petitions. Asian Americans who normally might not have been involved in the political process started standing in front of restaurants and on corners to collect signatures. This was true in Asian and even non-Asian neighborhoods throughout the city. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9872681498527527}
They reminded me of the efforts of Richard Close, who, before his recent death, was the president of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association in Los Angeles. I wrote about his grass-roots successes in an earlier edition of the newsletter. He was behind monumental changes to California’s landscape, including Proposition 13, the landmark property tax bill, which may very well be the most consequential law on the state books. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9846197962760925}
Throughout his career, progressives dismissed Close’s activism and his remarkable organizing skills. Instead, they pointed to the fact that he represented a largely wealthy and white constituency and suggested that he had somehow used his power and influence to get undemocratic results. This may have been true, but he had a talent for collecting converts in grocery store parking lots and strip malls, building voting blocs that showed up to every seemingly unimportant election. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7115663886070251}
The activists behind the recall effort in San Francisco may not have known who Close was, but they seem to have followed his playbook of organizing within neighborhoods, flexing voting power in low-turnout elections and putting together a platform based entirely on self-interest. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6141274571418762}
Along the way, they picked up important political endorsements — Mayor London Breed and State Senator Scott Wiener supported the recall (Wiener announced his support the day after Youngkin won in Virginia) — and built connections with existing community groups. Before long, they had a full-fledged political coalition that took down three members of a local school board. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9668965935707092}
If you want another example of what a group like this can do, consider the leaders of the Asian American organizations that allied with the conservative legal activist Edward Blum to sue Harvard over affirmative action. The case, now before the Supreme Court, will likely bring about an end to race-based college admissions throughout the country. The origins of this group don’t lie in Republican dark money or disinformation campaigns. Instead, they first organized in 2013 because they wanted to protest what they felt was a racist sketch on the Jimmy Kimmel show. They got Kimmel to apologize and moved on to fight affirmative action in California before turning their attention to Harvard and the Supreme Court. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9870678782463074}
When all the narratives about the recall of the three board members and what it means for Democrats wind to their end, that foundation of organized Asian Americans will still be there. In San Francisco they provided a glimpse of reality amid all the theorizing on wokeness, Covid fatigue and red waves in the midterms and beyond. It’s hard to imagine that any result in a blue city within a blue state will tell us all that much about what’s coming in 2022 or 2024; not all politics take place on such grand, national stages. A lot of times, it’s just angry citizens organizing out of pure self-interest — in this case in opposition to equity efforts at a magnet school — and then drawing in others who might be mad at the same people about Covid closures, school renamings or whatever else. The San Francisco outcome should remind us that politics is still local. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8878353834152222}

Our anxiety over the upcoming midterm and presidential elections has turned every vote, however local and peculiar, into a referendum on the future of the nation. Take last November’s governor’s race in Virginia. After the results came in for the Republican, Glenn Youngkin, hundreds of column inches were dedicated to how the result reflected a growing discontent among normally liberal voters about Covid school closures and critical race theory being taught in schools. This may have been the story of that particular election, but so many people seemed convinced that it was conclusive proof that Democrats had turned against their own party for good and would be summarily be sweeping progressives out of office in 2022 and 2024. Evidence I am not immune to this style of political fortune telling, but what’s more interesting to me is what actually drives these predictions of doom for Democrats. Two assumptions seem to be lurking somewhere underneath the surface. The first: School closures irreparably harmed the Democratic Party. The second: There is a backlash against diversity and equity measures, many of which were established after the nationwide George Floyd protests. Claim So on Tuesday, when the deep blue city of San Francisco recalled three ultraprogressive, equity-focused members of the school board, ousting them in stunning three-to-one votes, what are we to make of it? Is it a harbinger of coming catastrophe for Democrats? Or are we dealing with a local election with local concerns? Was the recall the result of parents who were frustrated by the extended closures of schools even when the city had low coronavirus positivity and death rates? At times, the board members had seemed more concerned with renaming schools, including one named after Abraham Lincoln, than with figuring out a plan to reopen. Evidence Should the blame be placed on the board’s decision to change the admission policy at the elite Lowell High School from merit-based to lottery? Lead Or is Alison Collins, the most controversial of the three school board officials who were forced out, the reason for it all? The wife of a wealthy real estate developer, she was responsible for much-publicized and seemingly anti-Asian tweets, followed by an absurd $87 million lawsuit against the city, the school district and her fellow school board members. If you connect any one of these factors with the landslide results, you can construct various narratives about the failure of the Democratic Party — overzealous Covid restrictions, out-of-control wokeness or being oblivious to an angry class of parents who just want their kids to be able to work hard and succeed. The school board vote reflects all of these things, of course, but not in equal proportion. Parents may have been impatient with the length of the school closures, and many may point to the strangeness of the board’s obsession with renaming schools while students were sitting at home, but the Bay Area shut down earlier than most parts of the country, and many residents here are proud of the region’s relatively low Covid toll. Attitudes about closures have changed, but this isn’t a city that’s exactly bursting with anti-mask, anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown sentiment. That hasn’t stopped some pundits from declaring that the recall signals the end of all progressive politics, especially in places that had extended school closures. A Republican lawmaker on Fox News declared that the results signaled a coming “red wave” in the midterms. This doesn’t mean that the shuttering of schools had no effect on the vote — I’m quite certain it had a large role — but it doesn’t seem to have been the catalyst. A recall requires people to go out and get signatures, file motions and keep up a lengthy campaign. Do we really believe that San Francisco, of all places, became so radicalized against school closures that they triggered the recall in the early months of 2021? What’s far more likely — and supported by the voting data — is that the recall was mostly brought about by a coalition of parents who were mad about the changes at Lowell. On Feb. 2, 2021, members of the school board put forth a resolution to end test-based admissions at the school permanently and to use instead the district’s standard lottery system as a way to diversify the mostly white and Asian student body. On Feb. 9 the school board voted 5 to 2 to adopt the resolution. Ten days later, two parents began the campaign to recall the three school board members. The vote capped a year of organizing by a mostly Asian American bloc of parents and citizens. Investors provided much of the campaign’s funding. The large amount — over $2 million in total — has raised questions about whether the effort was just an attempt by Silicon Valley and Wall Street to beat back equity efforts in public schools. Evidence But this sort of dismissal belies the actual organizing that went into the effort and the work of hundreds of volunteers who collected signatures for the recall election throughout the city. It also ignores relatively high turnout rates in Asian neighborhoods and the overwhelming majority of those residents who voted to recall. Rebuttal As a resident of the Bay Area, I first came across these activists last year while waiting in line outside H Mart, a Korean grocery chain whose San Francisco location is in the southern part of the city. I go to H Mart quite regularly, and for months, nearly every time I went, I would see the same people — mostly elderly Chinese American men and women — standing out front with their fliers and petitions. Asian Americans who normally might not have been involved in the political process started standing in front of restaurants and on corners to collect signatures. This was true in Asian and even non-Asian neighborhoods throughout the city. They reminded me of the efforts of Richard Close, who, before his recent death, was the president of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association in Los Angeles. I wrote about his grass-roots successes in an earlier edition of the newsletter. He was behind monumental changes to California’s landscape, including Proposition 13, the landmark property tax bill, which may very well be the most consequential law on the state books. Throughout his career, progressives dismissed Close’s activism and his remarkable organizing skills. Instead, they pointed to the fact that he represented a largely wealthy and white constituency and suggested that he had somehow used his power and influence to get undemocratic results. This may have been true, but he had a talent for collecting converts in grocery store parking lots and strip malls, building voting blocs that showed up to every seemingly unimportant election. The activists behind the recall effort in San Francisco may not have known who Close was, but they seem to have followed his playbook of organizing within neighborhoods, flexing voting power in low-turnout elections and putting together a platform based entirely on self-interest. Along the way, they picked up important political endorsements — Mayor London Breed and State Senator Scott Wiener supported the recall (Wiener announced his support the day after Youngkin won in Virginia) — and built connections with existing community groups. Before long, they had a full-fledged political coalition that took down three members of a local school board. If you want another example of what a group like this can do, consider the leaders of the Asian American organizations that allied with the conservative legal activist Edward Blum to sue Harvard over affirmative action. The case, now before the Supreme Court, will likely bring about an end to race-based college admissions throughout the country. The origins of this group don’t lie in Republican dark money or disinformation campaigns. Instead, they first organized in 2013 because they wanted to protest what they felt was a racist sketch on the Jimmy Kimmel show. They got Kimmel to apologize and moved on to fight affirmative action in California before turning their attention to Harvard and the Supreme Court. When all the narratives about the recall of the three board members and what it means for Democrats wind to their end, that foundation of organized Asian Americans will still be there. In San Francisco they provided a glimpse of reality amid all the theorizing on wokeness, Covid fatigue and red waves in the midterms and beyond. It’s hard to imagine that any result in a blue city within a blue state will tell us all that much about what’s coming in 2022 or 2024; not all politics take place on such grand, national stages. A lot of times, it’s just angry citizens organizing out of pure self-interest — in this case in opposition to equity efforts at a magnet school — and then drawing in others who might be mad at the same people about Covid closures, school renamings or whatever else. The San Francisco outcome should remind us that politics is still local. Evidence

nytimes\seasonal-depression-covid.txt

Using custom data configuration default-d5fda5a67e9a1cba

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-d5fda5a67e9a1cba\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-d5fda5a67e9a1cba\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Seeing friends was normally the highlight of Kendra Sands’ week. One night in January 2018, she had plans to meet two for dinner, but instead, Ms. Sands, who lives in Charlotte, N.C., crawled into bed. She wanted to go out, but she was stuck in a dark room, sobbing. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7155058979988098}
“I forced myself to put on different clothes, touch up my makeup and get in the car,” she said. “But driving to the restaurant, I realized hibernating in bed had been a pattern for weeks.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8475790023803711}
Sands initially blamed PMS for the crying episodes, but after a month she still had no relief. After asking about her mental health pattern in previous years, Ms. Sands’ therapist eventually diagnosed her with seasonal affective disorder. “I knew I didn’t like the cold or dreariness of winter, but I never thought I had a form of depression,” Ms. Sands said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9838346242904663}
According to Vaile Wright, senior director of health care innovation and practice directorate at the American Psychological Association, seasonal affective disorder (S.A.D.) is a type of major depression. What makes S.A.D. unique is its timing: “It has a distinct seasonal onset, typically in winter, and a spontaneous remission of symptoms,” she said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9100148677825928}
S.A.D. patients experience classic depression symptoms: sadness, irritability, trouble concentrating, lack of interest in activities and increased sleep and appetite. It doesn’t have to be cold or snowy, people can experience S.A.D. in sunny climates like Florida or Southern California. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9712218046188354}
“The important consideration for all forms of S.A.D. is the effect of your surroundings,” said Dr. Amit Etkin, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University. “The light you experience, how you interact with the world when you get up, and when you go to bed all have a disproportionate effect on your mood.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7979626655578613}
Michael Terman, professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University and founder of the Center for Environmental Therapeutics, said it’s common to gain weight and feel lethargic in winter, but only around three percent of the population has S.A.D. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.646899938583374}
To be diagnosed, you need to experience at least five of nine clinical symptoms for at least two weeks, said Paul Desan, assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine. If you don’t, you could have subsyndromal S.A.D., a milder version Dr. Desan said people often call “winter blues.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9761270880699158}
A distinct, seasonal pattern is key to recognizing S.A.D., feeling normal during spring and summer, then dwindling in energy and mood as days get shorter — almost like you want to hibernate. If you have a family member with S.A.D., you might be more likely to develop it, and Dr. Desan said the disorder is three times more common in women. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9794259667396545}
According to Dr. Terman, S.A.D. prevalence increases as you move north, until you hit 38 degrees (around Washington D.C.). Anywhere farther north is essentially equally affected at maximum severity. The likelihood also rises near the western edges of time zones, where dawn occurs later.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9894700050354004}
Experts agree it’s important to treat S.A.D. if you think you may have it. Here are some of the most common treatment methods they recommend. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.28311002254486084}
Many forms of depression, Dr. Wright said, benefit from changes to sleep schedule, a nutritious diet, exercise and social interaction. If you have S.A.D., put a winter spin on these behaviors. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.772271454334259}
For example, even if you want to sleep later, set an alarm each day so you can experience early-morning sunshine, which helps with S.A.D. symptoms. “Engaging actively in the world, as if you already had those rhythms, is a good way to help reset your circadian rhythm,” Dr. Etkin said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9922546148300171}
What you do at night matters, too. Dr. Etkin suggests basic sleep hygiene like avoiding screens (and any artificial light). Try to keep your bedtime consistent — not too late — and avoid too much caffeine or alcohol, which can interfere with your quality of rest and ability to get up. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9449842572212219}
Light activates a bodily signal that informs your cells what time of day it is. Morning light causes cortisol to spike, giving you energy. The time of that initial spike determines when your brain releases melatonin, a hormone that makes you sleepy before bedtime. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9547826647758484}
During winter, people often get less light in the morning and too much artificial light at night, which throws off these signals, affecting sleep and mood. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5555127859115601}
Light boxes — devices that produce artificial light similar to sunlight — may be an effective way to correct that. In a meta-analysis of 19 studies, bright light therapy was superior to placebo; another small study found 61 percent of light-therapy patients saw their depression symptoms ebb in four weeks. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7195830345153809}
There is some evidence that sitting in front of a 10,000-lux (the measure of light intensity) light box for 30-45 minutes every day around sunrise during fall and winter decreases S.A.D. symptoms. If you’re currently experiencing S.A.D. symptoms, it’s not too late to start. You can also begin treating next season’s symptoms in the fall. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9741153717041016}
As tempting as it is to hit the snooze button on weekends, Dr. Desan said your mood will start to sag again if you don’t do your treatment every day around sunrise, so build light therapy into your life. Most research-grade light boxes allow you to sit at arm’s length and move your head, so you should be able to eat breakfast, drink coffee or read. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9698259830474854}
An effective light box is usually at least $100, but not every option is equally effective. Of the 24 devices Dr. Desan tested in 2019, only seven met clinical criteria. The rest weren’t as effective as research-grade boxes. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9246963858604431}
According to Anna Wirz-Justice, professor emeritus in the Centre for Chronobiology at the University of Basel, in Switzerland, natural light isn’t only cheaper than a light box, it’s also brighter. Sunrise light is equivalent to 1,000 lux. A rainy morning provides around 10,000 lux, and snow on the ground is even brighter, at 50,000 lux. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.989476203918457}
Aim to go outside within 30 minutes after sunrise. “You don’t need to see the sun cross the horizon,” said Dr. Huberman. “What you’re looking for is the quality of light that happens when the sun is low in the sky.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9204869866371155}
Duration depends on where you live and the weather. Dr. Huberman suggested around five minutes outside if it’s bright or 10-15 minutes if it’s cloudy. It’s OK to wear glasses or contacts, but skip sunglasses and never look at the sun directly. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9824987649917603}
Since 2000, Kelly Rohan, a psychology professor at the University of Vermont, has been conducting clinical trials comparing cognitive behavioral therapy (or C.B.T.) to light therapy. Her work suggests both treatments are effective for people with S.A.D. — especially after a new diagnosis. But when she followed people with S.A.D. for two winters, C.B.T. worked better than bright light therapy to prevent recurrences. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.6570099592208862}
Dr. Rohan said C.B.T. may reduce symptoms more effectively because it provides long-term coping skills for changing negative thought and behavior patterns — whereas light therapy only works when you do it. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6864415407180786}
For Ms. Sands, the combination of lifestyle changes and psychotherapy made a significant difference in reducing her symptoms. But nothing helped more than naming the debilitating dip in her mood every winter. “Because I have a diagnosis, I can be proactive,” Ms. Sands said. “I don’t have to wait until spring to feel better.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9076482653617859}

Seeing friends was normally the highlight of Kendra Sands’ week. One night in January 2018, she had plans to meet two for dinner, but instead, Ms. Sands, who lives in Charlotte, N.C., crawled into bed. She wanted to go out, but she was stuck in a dark room, sobbing. “I forced myself to put on different clothes, touch up my makeup and get in the car,” she said. “But driving to the restaurant, I realized hibernating in bed had been a pattern for weeks.” Sands initially blamed PMS for the crying episodes, but after a month she still had no relief. After asking about her mental health pattern in previous years, Ms. Sands’ therapist eventually diagnosed her with seasonal affective disorder. “I knew I didn’t like the cold or dreariness of winter, but I never thought I had a form of depression,” Ms. Sands said. According to Vaile Wright, senior director of health care innovation and practice directorate at the American Psychological Association, seasonal affective disorder (S.A.D.) is a type of major depression. What makes S.A.D. unique is its timing: “It has a distinct seasonal onset, typically in winter, and a spontaneous remission of symptoms,” she said. S.A.D. patients experience classic depression symptoms: sadness, irritability, trouble concentrating, lack of interest in activities and increased sleep and appetite. It doesn’t have to be cold or snowy, people can experience S.A.D. in sunny climates like Florida or Southern California. “The important consideration for all forms of S.A.D. is the effect of your surroundings,” said Dr. Amit Etkin, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University. “The light you experience, how you interact with the world when you get up, and when you go to bed all have a disproportionate effect on your mood.” Michael Terman, professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University and founder of the Center for Environmental Therapeutics, said it’s common to gain weight and feel lethargic in winter, but only around three percent of the population has S.A.D. To be diagnosed, you need to experience at least five of nine clinical symptoms for at least two weeks, said Paul Desan, assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine. If you don’t, you could have subsyndromal S.A.D., a milder version Dr. Desan said people often call “winter blues.” A distinct, seasonal pattern is key to recognizing S.A.D., feeling normal during spring and summer, then dwindling in energy and mood as days get shorter — almost like you want to hibernate. If you have a family member with S.A.D., you might be more likely to develop it, and Dr. Desan said the disorder is three times more common in women. According to Dr. Terman, S.A.D. prevalence increases as you move north, until you hit 38 degrees (around Washington D.C.). Anywhere farther north is essentially equally affected at maximum severity. The likelihood also rises near the western edges of time zones, where dawn occurs later. Evidence Experts agree it’s important to treat S.A.D. if you think you may have it. Here are some of the most common treatment methods they recommend. Claim Many forms of depression, Dr. Wright said, benefit from changes to sleep schedule, a nutritious diet, exercise and social interaction. If you have S.A.D., put a winter spin on these behaviors. For example, even if you want to sleep later, set an alarm each day so you can experience early-morning sunshine, which helps with S.A.D. symptoms. “Engaging actively in the world, as if you already had those rhythms, is a good way to help reset your circadian rhythm,” Dr. Etkin said. What you do at night matters, too. Dr. Etkin suggests basic sleep hygiene like avoiding screens (and any artificial light). Try to keep your bedtime consistent — not too late — and avoid too much caffeine or alcohol, which can interfere with your quality of rest and ability to get up. Light activates a bodily signal that informs your cells what time of day it is. Morning light causes cortisol to spike, giving you energy. The time of that initial spike determines when your brain releases melatonin, a hormone that makes you sleepy before bedtime. Evidence During winter, people often get less light in the morning and too much artificial light at night, which throws off these signals, affecting sleep and mood. Claim Light boxes — devices that produce artificial light similar to sunlight — may be an effective way to correct that. In a meta-analysis of 19 studies, bright light therapy was superior to placebo; another small study found 61 percent of light-therapy patients saw their depression symptoms ebb in four weeks. There is some evidence that sitting in front of a 10,000-lux (the measure of light intensity) light box for 30-45 minutes every day around sunrise during fall and winter decreases S.A.D. symptoms. If you’re currently experiencing S.A.D. symptoms, it’s not too late to start. You can also begin treating next season’s symptoms in the fall. As tempting as it is to hit the snooze button on weekends, Dr. Desan said your mood will start to sag again if you don’t do your treatment every day around sunrise, so build light therapy into your life. Most research-grade light boxes allow you to sit at arm’s length and move your head, so you should be able to eat breakfast, drink coffee or read. An effective light box is usually at least $100, but not every option is equally effective. Of the 24 devices Dr. Desan tested in 2019, only seven met clinical criteria. The rest weren’t as effective as research-grade boxes. According to Anna Wirz-Justice, professor emeritus in the Centre for Chronobiology at the University of Basel, in Switzerland, natural light isn’t only cheaper than a light box, it’s also brighter. Sunrise light is equivalent to 1,000 lux. A rainy morning provides around 10,000 lux, and snow on the ground is even brighter, at 50,000 lux. Aim to go outside within 30 minutes after sunrise. “You don’t need to see the sun cross the horizon,” said Dr. Huberman. “What you’re looking for is the quality of light that happens when the sun is low in the sky.” Duration depends on where you live and the weather. Dr. Huberman suggested around five minutes outside if it’s bright or 10-15 minutes if it’s cloudy. It’s OK to wear glasses or contacts, but skip sunglasses and never look at the sun directly. Evidence Since 2000, Kelly Rohan, a psychology professor at the University of Vermont, has been conducting clinical trials comparing cognitive behavioral therapy (or C.B.T.) to light therapy. Her work suggests both treatments are effective for people with S.A.D. — especially after a new diagnosis. But when she followed people with S.A.D. for two winters, C.B.T. worked better than bright light therapy to prevent recurrences. Lead Dr. Rohan said C.B.T. may reduce symptoms more effectively because it provides long-term coping skills for changing negative thought and behavior patterns — whereas light therapy only works when you do it. For Ms. Sands, the combination of lifestyle changes and psychotherapy made a significant difference in reducing her symptoms. But nothing helped more than naming the debilitating dip in her mood every winter. “Because I have a diagnosis, I can be proactive,” Ms. Sands said. “I don’t have to wait until spring to feel better.” Evidence

nytimes\seattle-bicycle-helmet.txt

Using custom data configuration default-8644ae573585d5bd

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-8644ae573585d5bd\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-8644ae573585d5bd\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

In Seattle, home to one of the largest populations of bike commuters in the country, officials have overturned a decades-old regulation requiring cyclists to wear helmets because of discriminatory enforcement of the rule against homeless people and people of color. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6427868604660034}
The King County Board of Health voted to repeal the requirement on Thursday, with only one member opposing the decision to roll back a measure that even critics acknowledge has saved lives. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3184342682361603}
“The question before us yesterday wasn’t the efficacy of helmets,” said Girmay Zahilay, a board member who is also a member of the King County Council. “The question before us was whether a helmet law that’s enforced by police on balance produces results that outweigh the harm that that law creates.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.495687335729599}
Seattle is the largest city in the country to enforce a bike helmet requirement. The city of Tacoma, Wash., repealed its requirement in 2020, citing similar equity concerns, as did Dallas in 2014 for those 18 and older, as a means of encouraging more bike-sharing. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9738957285881042}
In a county that has made racial justice reform a priority — the King County health board declared racism a public health crisis in 2020 — the regulation pitted the need to address racial equity against the obvious safety benefits of helmets. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6813639402389526}
“We have to have a broad view of public health: Yes, we have to think about brain injury, and we also have to think about the impact on our criminal legal system,” Mr. Zahilay said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5805063843727112}
The board of health, made up of elected officials and appointed medical experts from across the county, began to scrutinize the helmet rule in 2020 after an analysis of court records from Crosscut, a local news site, showed that it was rarely enforced, and enforced disproportionately when it was. Since 2017, Seattle police had given just 117 helmet citations, over 40 percent of which went to people who were homeless. Since 2019, 60 percent of citations went to people who were homeless. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9905320405960083}
A separate analysis from Central Seattle Greenways, a safe streets advocacy group, found that Black cyclists were almost four times as likely to receive a citation for violating the helmet requirement as white cyclists. Native American cyclists were just over twice as likely to receive one as white cyclists. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9320572018623352}
Neither study looked at whether homeless people or people of color wore helmets less frequently than other groups — or whether, out of economic necessity, they were more likely to ride a bike. Critics nonetheless said enforcement appeared to be discriminatory. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6241978406906128}
“It was a law that really just allowed the Police Department, the Seattle Police Department, to harass Black and brown community members,” said K.L. Shannon, an organizer for Seattle Neighborhood Greenways and police accountability chair for the Seattle King County chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8982252478599548}
Ms. Shannon’s nephew was just 8 years old when he and three friends were stopped by an officer a few blocks from their houses for not wearing helmets, Ms. Shannon said. She said the officer accused them of stealing the bikes. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9616965651512146}
“Until this day my nephew doesn’t ride a bike,” Ms. Shannon said. “He’s never forgotten that.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4613143801689148}
In an incident in 2016, a Black man was stopped by the Seattle police for riding a bike with no helmet. In a dashcam video of the tense, 19-minute stop, one officer shared with another that the suspect “matches the description of a burglary suspect,” suggesting that the helmet regulation was used as a pretense. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9794225096702576}
In 2019, Daniel Oakes was stopped for not wearing his helmet while riding his bicycle on a sidewalk near a homeless encampment and then charged with an unrelated offense. A judge dismissed the case after Mr. Oakes’s lawyer argued that the helmet requirement had been unconstitutionally used as a pretext to make the stop. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9506751298904419}
In a statement to Crosscut in response to its analysis of bike stop data, a Seattle Police Department spokesman, Randall Huserik, said the traffic stops were often used to educate riders about the benefits of wearing a helmet. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7168530225753784}
“The focus is the behavior, not the status,” he said. “A risk of serious brain injury/death remains just as dire for someone experiencing homelessness as it does for someone who is housed — that is the risk these citations are intended to mitigate.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7781908512115479}
Last month, the department announced that it would no longer use bicycle helmet infractions — along with a few other low-risk safety violations — as primary reasons for a traffic stop. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6062645316123962}
As the largest city in King County, Seattle is the biggest jurisdiction affected by the rollback. Seventeen jurisdictions outside Seattle — making up just over one-third of the county’s population — have their own mandates requiring helmet use and will not be affected by Thursday’s vote. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9568153619766235}
Opponents of the repeal have warned that it could have serious safety consequences. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.9337425827980042}
“No helmets means more death and more serious injury,” said Richard Adler, a lawyer who works with clients who have suffered brain injuries. “Access to helmets is already an issue, and repealing this disincentivizes everybody to not wear their helmet over time.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8978092670440674}
Helmets reduce the likelihood of serious head injury by 60 percent, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. In cases where it was known whether cyclists were wearing helmets, 79 percent of those who were fatally injured in bike crashes between 2010 and 2017 were not wearing them. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9736701846122742}
Advocates for the repeal said they believed that people would continue to wear helmets even in the absence of a legal requirement. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.664228618144989}
When the requirement was first enacted in 1993, helmet use was not widespread, said Joe McDermott, a board member who voted in favor of the repeal. But times have changed, he said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4532327651977539}
“The law and the public education around creating the law helped change behaviors and norms,” Mr. McDermott said. “And 30 years later it’s essential that we do re-evaluate our intended purposes when we adopted the helmet law and the unintended consequences of having it in place.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7716847658157349}
Helmet use in the city is as high as 91 percent among private bike riders, according to one study. In nearby Portland, Ore., advocates for repeal noted, use is similarly high, despite the fact that the city does not have an all-ages helmet law. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9261106252670288}
Access to helmets is a particular challenge for low-income people: according to a study from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, people in the lowest income bracket were about half as likely to wear a helmet for all rides as people in the highest income bracket. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5121410489082336}
But Mr. McDermott said he doubted that those disparities accounted for the extent of the disproportionate enforcement of the rule. And he said the county could address the disparities without policing: The county recently budgeted more than $200,000 to buy helmets and expand education on bike safety. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8364765048027039}
Across the country, other kinds of biking regulations have also been found to be enforced in discriminatory ways. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8415100574493408}
In Chicago, a study found that tickets were issued to cyclists eight times more often in majority-Black parts of the city. An investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice found that 73 percent of bicycle stops in Tampa, Fla., between 2014 and 2015 involved Black cyclists, despite the fact that Black people made up 26 percent of the population. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9840207695960999}
“The data revealed that the stops did not reduce crime or produce any other positive outcome,” such as reducing bike crashes or injuries, the report said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4869351387023926}
“The best investments to keep people safe while riding bikes is creating safe streets, safer transportation systems,” said Bill Nesper, director of the League of American Bicyclists. “Those are the types of investments that are going to keep people walking and biking safest in our communities, instead of investing in laws like this that could be a barrier to people riding bikes and that may be enforced in a discretionary and discriminatory way.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6755267977714539}

In Seattle, home to one of the largest populations of bike commuters in the country, officials have overturned a decades-old regulation requiring cyclists to wear helmets because of discriminatory enforcement of the rule against homeless people and people of color. Evidence The King County Board of Health voted to repeal the requirement on Thursday, with only one member opposing the decision to roll back a measure that even critics acknowledge has saved lives. Claim “The question before us yesterday wasn’t the efficacy of helmets,” said Girmay Zahilay, a board member who is also a member of the King County Council. “The question before us was whether a helmet law that’s enforced by police on balance produces results that outweigh the harm that that law creates.” Seattle is the largest city in the country to enforce a bike helmet requirement. The city of Tacoma, Wash., repealed its requirement in 2020, citing similar equity concerns, as did Dallas in 2014 for those 18 and older, as a means of encouraging more bike-sharing. In a county that has made racial justice reform a priority — the King County health board declared racism a public health crisis in 2020 — the regulation pitted the need to address racial equity against the obvious safety benefits of helmets. “We have to have a broad view of public health: Yes, we have to think about brain injury, and we also have to think about the impact on our criminal legal system,” Mr. Zahilay said. The board of health, made up of elected officials and appointed medical experts from across the county, began to scrutinize the helmet rule in 2020 after an analysis of court records from Crosscut, a local news site, showed that it was rarely enforced, and enforced disproportionately when it was. Since 2017, Seattle police had given just 117 helmet citations, over 40 percent of which went to people who were homeless. Since 2019, 60 percent of citations went to people who were homeless. A separate analysis from Central Seattle Greenways, a safe streets advocacy group, found that Black cyclists were almost four times as likely to receive a citation for violating the helmet requirement as white cyclists. Native American cyclists were just over twice as likely to receive one as white cyclists. Neither study looked at whether homeless people or people of color wore helmets less frequently than other groups — or whether, out of economic necessity, they were more likely to ride a bike. Critics nonetheless said enforcement appeared to be discriminatory. “It was a law that really just allowed the Police Department, the Seattle Police Department, to harass Black and brown community members,” said K.L. Shannon, an organizer for Seattle Neighborhood Greenways and police accountability chair for the Seattle King County chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. Ms. Shannon’s nephew was just 8 years old when he and three friends were stopped by an officer a few blocks from their houses for not wearing helmets, Ms. Shannon said. She said the officer accused them of stealing the bikes. “Until this day my nephew doesn’t ride a bike,” Ms. Shannon said. “He’s never forgotten that.” In an incident in 2016, a Black man was stopped by the Seattle police for riding a bike with no helmet. In a dashcam video of the tense, 19-minute stop, one officer shared with another that the suspect “matches the description of a burglary suspect,” suggesting that the helmet regulation was used as a pretense. In 2019, Daniel Oakes was stopped for not wearing his helmet while riding his bicycle on a sidewalk near a homeless encampment and then charged with an unrelated offense. A judge dismissed the case after Mr. Oakes’s lawyer argued that the helmet requirement had been unconstitutionally used as a pretext to make the stop. In a statement to Crosscut in response to its analysis of bike stop data, a Seattle Police Department spokesman, Randall Huserik, said the traffic stops were often used to educate riders about the benefits of wearing a helmet. “The focus is the behavior, not the status,” he said. “A risk of serious brain injury/death remains just as dire for someone experiencing homelessness as it does for someone who is housed — that is the risk these citations are intended to mitigate.” Evidence Last month, the department announced that it would no longer use bicycle helmet infractions — along with a few other low-risk safety violations — as primary reasons for a traffic stop. Claim As the largest city in King County, Seattle is the biggest jurisdiction affected by the rollback. Seventeen jurisdictions outside Seattle — making up just over one-third of the county’s population — have their own mandates requiring helmet use and will not be affected by Thursday’s vote. Evidence Opponents of the repeal have warned that it could have serious safety consequences. Counterclaim “No helmets means more death and more serious injury,” said Richard Adler, a lawyer who works with clients who have suffered brain injuries. “Access to helmets is already an issue, and repealing this disincentivizes everybody to not wear their helmet over time.” Helmets reduce the likelihood of serious head injury by 60 percent, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. In cases where it was known whether cyclists were wearing helmets, 79 percent of those who were fatally injured in bike crashes between 2010 and 2017 were not wearing them. Evidence Advocates for the repeal said they believed that people would continue to wear helmets even in the absence of a legal requirement. Counterclaim When the requirement was first enacted in 1993, helmet use was not widespread, said Joe McDermott, a board member who voted in favor of the repeal. But times have changed, he said. “The law and the public education around creating the law helped change behaviors and norms,” Mr. McDermott said. “And 30 years later it’s essential that we do re-evaluate our intended purposes when we adopted the helmet law and the unintended consequences of having it in place.” Helmet use in the city is as high as 91 percent among private bike riders, according to one study. In nearby Portland, Ore., advocates for repeal noted, use is similarly high, despite the fact that the city does not have an all-ages helmet law. Access to helmets is a particular challenge for low-income people: according to a study from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, people in the lowest income bracket were about half as likely to wear a helmet for all rides as people in the highest income bracket. Evidence But Mr. McDermott said he doubted that those disparities accounted for the extent of the disproportionate enforcement of the rule. And he said the county could address the disparities without policing: The county recently budgeted more than $200,000 to buy helmets and expand education on bike safety. Rebuttal Across the country, other kinds of biking regulations have also been found to be enforced in discriminatory ways. Claim In Chicago, a study found that tickets were issued to cyclists eight times more often in majority-Black parts of the city. An investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice found that 73 percent of bicycle stops in Tampa, Fla., between 2014 and 2015 involved Black cyclists, despite the fact that Black people made up 26 percent of the population. “The data revealed that the stops did not reduce crime or produce any other positive outcome,” such as reducing bike crashes or injuries, the report said. “The best investments to keep people safe while riding bikes is creating safe streets, safer transportation systems,” said Bill Nesper, director of the League of American Bicyclists. “Those are the types of investments that are going to keep people walking and biking safest in our communities, instead of investing in laws like this that could be a barrier to people riding bikes and that may be enforced in a discretionary and discriminatory way.” Evidence

nytimes\senate-spending-bill-shutdown.txt

Using custom data configuration default-82dacf1b5ec0c5d2

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-82dacf1b5ec0c5d2\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-82dacf1b5ec0c5d2\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

WASHINGTON — Congress gave final approval on Thursday to a bill to fund the government through March 11, averting a shutdown this week and giving lawmakers more time to cement a deal on spending for the remainder of the fiscal year. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7708747386932373}
Passage of the short-term measure in the Senate came less than 48 hours before government funding was sent to lapse, as lawmakers rushed to leave Washington for a weeklong recess. It passed 65 to 27, just over a week after the House approved it. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9441490769386292}
The legislation, which will keep the government funded through March 11, now heads to President Biden’s desk. He is expected to sign it. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.45663800835609436}
Lawmakers and aides are gambling that the three-week extension will provide enough time to finalize a deal on the dozen bills needed to keep federal government agencies and departments funded for the rest of the fiscal year. Four months into the fiscal year, which began in October, lawmakers have yet to reach an agreement, instead relying on a series of stopgap bills that maintain funding levels set under the Trump administration. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.976169228553772}
“Our government is not meant to run on autopilot, and American taxpayer dollars should not be spent on outdated priorities,” Senator Patrick J. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said on the Senate floor. “We have the responsibility to make the hard choices about how to invest in the American people.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8128222227096558}
Negotiations on the omnibus package had been stymied largely by an impasse over how to divide the money, with Democrats pressing to prioritize social and domestic programs while they control both chambers of Congress and the White House. Republicans, who are needed to muster the 60 votes necessary to pass most legislation, pushed to keep military spending on equal financial footing with those programs. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9282733798027039}
But senior lawmakers in both parties and both chambers said last week that they had resolved those differences over an outline, without divulging any details. Lawmakers and aides familiar with the emerging deal signaled that it would increase both military spending and domestic and social programs. (In his speech, Mr. Leahy hailed what he said would be “the biggest increase in nondefense programs in four years,” but did not offer specifics.) {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.714195191860199}
If they can nail down the details of the agreement, the catchall spending package would not only allow for spending increases, but unlock funding outlined in the bipartisan infrastructure law and, for the first time in more than a decade, fund earmarks that let individual lawmakers direct money to specific projects in their states. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.43288373947143555}
“Agencies need certainty, the businesses that rely on government for contracts need certainty, and our men and women who are serving in the military need certainty,” said Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9130548238754272}
It is also likely that many or all longtime policy provisions, like the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funding for most abortions, would be kept in some form in any such package. Republicans had also warned that those conditions — known as policy riders — would need to be maintained to ensure that enough of their party would back the legislation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8573774099349976}
Because the spending package is one of the few remaining measures that must pass before the end of this Congress, rank-and-file lawmakers are likely to try to attach additional legislation, potentially upending a final deal. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5310128927230835}
“Once you start a vehicle moving, a lot of people want to ride on it,” said Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Appropriations Committee. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5995235443115234}
Among the most obvious candidates is an emergency pandemic aid package, although the White House has not yet made a formal request. The Biden administration told key congressional officials on Tuesday that it could need as much as an additional $30 billion in coronavirus response funds, including to improve testing and vaccinations across the country. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.964503288269043}
Several Republicans have signaled a reluctance to support more pandemic spending after Democrats muscled through a $1.9 trillion pandemic aid package in March over their unanimous opposition. In an informal briefing with key congressional officials on Tuesday, Biden administration officials floated an additional $17.9 billion for vaccines and therapeutics, $4.9 billion for diagnostics and additional money to counter future variants, according to one official briefed on the details, who was not authorized to speak publicly and described the session on the condition of anonymity. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9914416670799255}
“They haven’t sent us a relief package yet,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said on Tuesday. “But obviously, we’re going to have to do something.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7889580130577087}
Still, the eight-page bill that passed on Thursday made no mention of more pandemic aid and had few additions beyond keeping the government open. One exception was a provision allocating new money to address water contamination caused by fuel leaking from the Red Hill shaft, a well run by the Pentagon on the Hawaii island of Oahu. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.37751322984695435}
Before passing the temporary spending bill, lawmakers voted down a few amendments proposed by Republicans, including a measure that would have defunded vaccine mandates, including for federal employees, and another that would have denied federal funding to schools that require coronavirus vaccinations for students. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7058517336845398}
The final vote had been delayed by a number of policy disputes and senatorial absences, as Democratic leaders scrambled to ensure they had the votes to prevent the amendments from changing the bill and forcing the House to vote again on the measure. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.49971410632133484}
Mr. Leahy, in particular, grew visibly frustrated on the floor by the delay, as he blocked an attempt by Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, to first swiftly pass legislation banning federal funding from going toward pipes for smoking crack cocaine and other drug paraphernalia. (Mr. Rubio denied he was trying to slow down passage of the stopgap bill, known as a continuing resolution.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.964255154132843}
“Everybody has a right to make any kind of political point for any group they want, but let’s talk about being U.S. senators,” Mr. Leahy said, banging his fist on his lectern. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.509108304977417}
“Let’s not slow things down,” he added. “Let’s vote on the continuing resolution. Let’s show the United States of America and the rest of the world that we can stay open.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5140602588653564}

WASHINGTON — Congress gave final approval on Thursday to a bill to fund the government through March 11, averting a shutdown this week and giving lawmakers more time to cement a deal on spending for the remainder of the fiscal year. Passage of the short-term measure in the Senate came less than 48 hours before government funding was sent to lapse, as lawmakers rushed to leave Washington for a weeklong recess. It passed 65 to 27, just over a week after the House approved it. The legislation, which will keep the government funded through March 11, now heads to President Biden’s desk. He is expected to sign it. Lawmakers and aides are gambling that the three-week extension will provide enough time to finalize a deal on the dozen bills needed to keep federal government agencies and departments funded for the rest of the fiscal year. Four months into the fiscal year, which began in October, lawmakers have yet to reach an agreement, instead relying on a series of stopgap bills that maintain funding levels set under the Trump administration. “Our government is not meant to run on autopilot, and American taxpayer dollars should not be spent on outdated priorities,” Senator Patrick J. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said on the Senate floor. “We have the responsibility to make the hard choices about how to invest in the American people.” Negotiations on the omnibus package had been stymied largely by an impasse over how to divide the money, with Democrats pressing to prioritize social and domestic programs while they control both chambers of Congress and the White House. Republicans, who are needed to muster the 60 votes necessary to pass most legislation, pushed to keep military spending on equal financial footing with those programs. Evidence But senior lawmakers in both parties and both chambers said last week that they had resolved those differences over an outline, without divulging any details. Lawmakers and aides familiar with the emerging deal signaled that it would increase both military spending and domestic and social programs. (In his speech, Mr. Leahy hailed what he said would be “the biggest increase in nondefense programs in four years,” but did not offer specifics.) Rebuttal If they can nail down the details of the agreement, the catchall spending package would not only allow for spending increases, but unlock funding outlined in the bipartisan infrastructure law and, for the first time in more than a decade, fund earmarks that let individual lawmakers direct money to specific projects in their states. “Agencies need certainty, the businesses that rely on government for contracts need certainty, and our men and women who are serving in the military need certainty,” said Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire. It is also likely that many or all longtime policy provisions, like the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funding for most abortions, would be kept in some form in any such package. Republicans had also warned that those conditions — known as policy riders — would need to be maintained to ensure that enough of their party would back the legislation. Evidence Because the spending package is one of the few remaining measures that must pass before the end of this Congress, rank-and-file lawmakers are likely to try to attach additional legislation, potentially upending a final deal. Claim “Once you start a vehicle moving, a lot of people want to ride on it,” said Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Appropriations Committee. Among the most obvious candidates is an emergency pandemic aid package, although the White House has not yet made a formal request. The Biden administration told key congressional officials on Tuesday that it could need as much as an additional $30 billion in coronavirus response funds, including to improve testing and vaccinations across the country. Several Republicans have signaled a reluctance to support more pandemic spending after Democrats muscled through a $1.9 trillion pandemic aid package in March over their unanimous opposition. In an informal briefing with key congressional officials on Tuesday, Biden administration officials floated an additional $17.9 billion for vaccines and therapeutics, $4.9 billion for diagnostics and additional money to counter future variants, according to one official briefed on the details, who was not authorized to speak publicly and described the session on the condition of anonymity. “They haven’t sent us a relief package yet,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said on Tuesday. “But obviously, we’re going to have to do something.” Evidence Still, the eight-page bill that passed on Thursday made no mention of more pandemic aid and had few additions beyond keeping the government open. One exception was a provision allocating new money to address water contamination caused by fuel leaking from the Red Hill shaft, a well run by the Pentagon on the Hawaii island of Oahu. Rebuttal Before passing the temporary spending bill, lawmakers voted down a few amendments proposed by Republicans, including a measure that would have defunded vaccine mandates, including for federal employees, and another that would have denied federal funding to schools that require coronavirus vaccinations for students. The final vote had been delayed by a number of policy disputes and senatorial absences, as Democratic leaders scrambled to ensure they had the votes to prevent the amendments from changing the bill and forcing the House to vote again on the measure. Mr. Leahy, in particular, grew visibly frustrated on the floor by the delay, as he blocked an attempt by Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, to first swiftly pass legislation banning federal funding from going toward pipes for smoking crack cocaine and other drug paraphernalia. (Mr. Rubio denied he was trying to slow down passage of the stopgap bill, known as a continuing resolution.) “Everybody has a right to make any kind of political point for any group they want, but let’s talk about being U.S. senators,” Mr. Leahy said, banging his fist on his lectern. “Let’s not slow things down,” he added. “Let’s vote on the continuing resolution. Let’s show the United States of America and the rest of the world that we can stay open.” Evidence

nytimes\severance-review.txt

Using custom data configuration default-0ef4e7c3402a43bd

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-0ef4e7c3402a43bd\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-0ef4e7c3402a43bd\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Two years into a pandemic, you would be forgiven for believing that the science-fiction aspect of Apple TV+’s “Severance” is that it involves people working side by side in an office. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5838949680328369}
But for the cubicle mates of the thrilling and loopily inventive “Severance,” created by Dan Erickson and produced and partly directed by Ben Stiller, the arrangement isn’t just ordinary. It’s the only life they’ve ever known. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8534050583839417}
The employees of the macrodata refinement department of Lumon Industries, led by Mark Scout (Adam Scott), have all agreed to undergo surgery to partition the work and personal sectors of their brains. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.521122395992279}
When each of them enters the office, a work self, or “innie,” becomes conscious and clocks in. Come quitting time, the out-of-office self, or “outie,” takes over and goes home, retaining no memory of life on the job. Think of it as a neurological mullet: business in the frontal lobe, party in the back. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8575885891914368}
Sweet deal, right? No more balancing work and personal life, no more bringing office stress home, no more Monday-morning dread. It could be bliss, for one of you at least. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5209635496139526}
As for Lumon’s employees — well, they are of two minds. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.9387683868408203}
At the start of “Severance,” which begins Friday, the staffers work contentedly in their retro-minimalist office, sorting numbers on computer terminals. They fit neat workplace-sitcom archetypes: Irving (John Turturro), the starchy veteran; Dylan (Zach Cherry), the cynical wisecracker; and Mark, the nice guy struggling with the responsibilities he inherited when the former team leader (Yul Vazquez) suddenly vanished. (Sounds significant; it is.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9393765330314636}
Their arrangement is shaken with the arrival of a new colleague, Helly (Britt Lower), who wakes on a conference table in an amnesiac stupor. (“Am I dead?” she asks. “Am I livestock?”) After she makes a brief, slapstick-violent attempt to flee, Mark explains that she is there of her own free will — “her” meaning her outie version, whose permission Helly would need in order to quit. Anyway, as Mark notes, “Quitting would effectively end your life, insomuch as you’ve come to know it.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9172258377075195}
There’s something different about Helly, whom Lower plays with a nervy intensity. She does not become a team player, despite training, bonding exercises and threats of the “break room” (the first word of which, at Lumon, is more verb than noun). She’s an irritant. Over an engrossing season, she prompts itches in her co-workers that lead them to wonder about their top-secret work and their outside lives, and to rebel. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9477056264877319}
The forces against them include their deadpan, terrifying boss, Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette); politicians who are pushing to broaden the use of severance technology; and, in a way, their out-of-office selves. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5779115557670593}
Sci-fi stories about altered consciousness, from “They Live” to “The Matrix” to “Homecoming,” often involve people having their minds tinkered with by aliens or evil institutions. “Severance” asks whether, given an incentive, you would subjugate a part of yourself, outsourcing your drudgery to another you, like Homer Simpson deferring his problems to “Future Homer.” (“Man, I don’t envy that guy!”) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7715039253234863}
Playful and mordantly funny, “Severance” is like a Charlie Kaufman-designed nightmare, from the midcentury-menacing set to the way it sketches the innies’ hermetic lives. They walk through the elevator doors at quitting time, then immediately back in to start the day, as if someone has snipped off the rest of life and twisted the remainder into a Möbius strip. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.648308515548706}
Undergirding the fun-house surrealism is the series’s feel for the soft tyrannies of the modern workplace. Troubled workers get a session with a “wellness” counselor (Dichen Lachman), who calms them with soothing trivia about outie life. The creepily cheerful H.R. rep/minder, Milchick (Tramell Tillman), bestows minor perks like a five-minute dance session or a “waffle party,” a goofy reward that becomes poignant when you realize the innies’ days eternally begin after breakfast and end before dinner. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9463359117507935}
The series’s tone and palette shift when we leave the office with Mark, who, we learn, volunteered for severance after losing his wife. For him, the operation is a means of creating a grief-free second self. Scott’s features transform when Mark shifts to outie mode, his face deflating like a flat tire. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8252571225166321}
Mark’s home life is not without drama; unbeknown to him, since he has no memory of the office, Harmony lives next door, surveilling him in the guise of a dotty neighbor. But maybe because of his sad-sack bearing (Scott feels more alive in the role of droll office guy, as in “Parks and Recreation”), the outside scenes drag, with a wintry pall that matches Mark’s gloom. Lumon may be a high-tech gulag, but it is by far the more fun place to spend time as a viewer. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9049408435821533}
The nine-episode season suffers from streaming slump in the middle, but it hooks you early and accelerates late, as the data crunchers learn more about Lumon and its other departments. (Turturro’s Irving strikes up a sweet flirtation with a courtly associate played by Christopher Walken.) It all builds to a tense, stupendous season finale that feels like a racecar hurtling toward a brick wall, in the best way. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9652518630027771}
The premise of “Severance” might appear superficially to be out of step with the times. After all, months of Slack huddles and Zoom meetings have fuzzed the boundaries between work and home, not carved them with a scalpel. But the story is perfectly timed for a moment when, through the stresses and disruptions of the pandemic, workers have been confronting what they’re asked to give of themselves for a paycheck. This may be the first great TV show of the Great Resignation. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.5710755586624146}
There are also hints that severance might have applications beyond the workplace, which holds promise for future seasons. How many unpleasant aspects of life might people like to outsource to another version of themselves — or even to make someone else forget, with the aid of a little brain snip? What kind of heaven could you live in if your alter ego could, like Persephone, do the time in hell? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8550243377685547}
In fact, “Severance” rings so true as a parable of modern life that it feels like a slight misstep for the series to depict Lumon the way it does — as a kind of cult, with a fanatical devotion to its 19th-century founder and his quasi biblical aphorisms. (“Let not weakness live in your veins.”) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.513352632522583}
As we know from reality, it doesn’t take a monstrously aberrant organization to abuse productivity-enhancing technology. It’s just business. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3245868980884552}

Two years into a pandemic, you would be forgiven for believing that the science-fiction aspect of Apple TV+’s “Severance” is that it involves people working side by side in an office. Claim But for the cubicle mates of the thrilling and loopily inventive “Severance,” created by Dan Erickson and produced and partly directed by Ben Stiller, the arrangement isn’t just ordinary. It’s the only life they’ve ever known. Rebuttal The employees of the macrodata refinement department of Lumon Industries, led by Mark Scout (Adam Scott), have all agreed to undergo surgery to partition the work and personal sectors of their brains. When each of them enters the office, a work self, or “innie,” becomes conscious and clocks in. Come quitting time, the out-of-office self, or “outie,” takes over and goes home, retaining no memory of life on the job. Think of it as a neurological mullet: business in the frontal lobe, party in the back. Sweet deal, right? No more balancing work and personal life, no more bringing office stress home, no more Monday-morning dread. It could be bliss, for one of you at least. Evidence As for Lumon’s employees — well, they are of two minds. Claim At the start of “Severance,” which begins Friday, the staffers work contentedly in their retro-minimalist office, sorting numbers on computer terminals. They fit neat workplace-sitcom archetypes: Irving (John Turturro), the starchy veteran; Dylan (Zach Cherry), the cynical wisecracker; and Mark, the nice guy struggling with the responsibilities he inherited when the former team leader (Yul Vazquez) suddenly vanished. (Sounds significant; it is.) Their arrangement is shaken with the arrival of a new colleague, Helly (Britt Lower), who wakes on a conference table in an amnesiac stupor. (“Am I dead?” she asks. “Am I livestock?”) After she makes a brief, slapstick-violent attempt to flee, Mark explains that she is there of her own free will — “her” meaning her outie version, whose permission Helly would need in order to quit. Anyway, as Mark notes, “Quitting would effectively end your life, insomuch as you’ve come to know it.” There’s something different about Helly, whom Lower plays with a nervy intensity. She does not become a team player, despite training, bonding exercises and threats of the “break room” (the first word of which, at Lumon, is more verb than noun). She’s an irritant. Over an engrossing season, she prompts itches in her co-workers that lead them to wonder about their top-secret work and their outside lives, and to rebel. The forces against them include their deadpan, terrifying boss, Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette); politicians who are pushing to broaden the use of severance technology; and, in a way, their out-of-office selves. Sci-fi stories about altered consciousness, from “They Live” to “The Matrix” to “Homecoming,” often involve people having their minds tinkered with by aliens or evil institutions. “Severance” asks whether, given an incentive, you would subjugate a part of yourself, outsourcing your drudgery to another you, like Homer Simpson deferring his problems to “Future Homer.” (“Man, I don’t envy that guy!”) Playful and mordantly funny, “Severance” is like a Charlie Kaufman-designed nightmare, from the midcentury-menacing set to the way it sketches the innies’ hermetic lives. They walk through the elevator doors at quitting time, then immediately back in to start the day, as if someone has snipped off the rest of life and twisted the remainder into a Möbius strip. Undergirding the fun-house surrealism is the series’s feel for the soft tyrannies of the modern workplace. Troubled workers get a session with a “wellness” counselor (Dichen Lachman), who calms them with soothing trivia about outie life. The creepily cheerful H.R. rep/minder, Milchick (Tramell Tillman), bestows minor perks like a five-minute dance session or a “waffle party,” a goofy reward that becomes poignant when you realize the innies’ days eternally begin after breakfast and end before dinner. The series’s tone and palette shift when we leave the office with Mark, who, we learn, volunteered for severance after losing his wife. For him, the operation is a means of creating a grief-free second self. Scott’s features transform when Mark shifts to outie mode, his face deflating like a flat tire. Mark’s home life is not without drama; unbeknown to him, since he has no memory of the office, Harmony lives next door, surveilling him in the guise of a dotty neighbor. But maybe because of his sad-sack bearing (Scott feels more alive in the role of droll office guy, as in “Parks and Recreation”), the outside scenes drag, with a wintry pall that matches Mark’s gloom. Lumon may be a high-tech gulag, but it is by far the more fun place to spend time as a viewer. The nine-episode season suffers from streaming slump in the middle, but it hooks you early and accelerates late, as the data crunchers learn more about Lumon and its other departments. (Turturro’s Irving strikes up a sweet flirtation with a courtly associate played by Christopher Walken.) It all builds to a tense, stupendous season finale that feels like a racecar hurtling toward a brick wall, in the best way. Evidence The premise of “Severance” might appear superficially to be out of step with the times. After all, months of Slack huddles and Zoom meetings have fuzzed the boundaries between work and home, not carved them with a scalpel. But the story is perfectly timed for a moment when, through the stresses and disruptions of the pandemic, workers have been confronting what they’re asked to give of themselves for a paycheck. This may be the first great TV show of the Great Resignation. Concluding Statement There are also hints that severance might have applications beyond the workplace, which holds promise for future seasons. How many unpleasant aspects of life might people like to outsource to another version of themselves — or even to make someone else forget, with the aid of a little brain snip? What kind of heaven could you live in if your alter ego could, like Persephone, do the time in hell? In fact, “Severance” rings so true as a parable of modern life that it feels like a slight misstep for the series to depict Lumon the way it does — as a kind of cult, with a fanatical devotion to its 19th-century founder and his quasi biblical aphorisms. (“Let not weakness live in your veins.”) Evidence As we know from reality, it doesn’t take a monstrously aberrant organization to abuse productivity-enhancing technology. It’s just business. Claim

nytimes\ski-tricks-utah.txt

Using custom data configuration default-7b6184b6d5bd4cff

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-7b6184b6d5bd4cff\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-7b6184b6d5bd4cff\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

I hurt. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8242244124412537}
Constellations of sallow contusions pulse on my legs, and my elbows resemble raw meat. Sweat soaks my helmet and drips into my ski boots. I have fallen more today than in all of my 35 years of skiing. And yet, I’m grateful. This could be so much worse. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7647950649261475}
It’s a brittle, 20-degree day in Park City, Utah, and feeble sunlight falls through the holes in the clouds. It is here in the spectacular Wasatch Mountains, 40 miles east of Salt Lake City, that you’ll find some of the country’s most famous ski areas. There’s Deer Valley, with its fizzy spas and brilliant glades, and Park City Mountain, a sprawling giant with heated lifts and 7,300 acres of terrain. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9674690961837769}
But I’m at a place called Woodward, which sits off Interstate 80 near a Phillips 66. There are no condos or restaurants with menus announcing bison in beurre. Woodward does have a ski lift, a few short runs and what looks like a warehouse. You can drive right by and not even notice it, but you should. This is where you come to up your game, literally. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.5797295570373535}
I learned to ski fairly young, and as a result, even now, well into my middle-age years, there are few slopes that scare me. I can fight my way down narrow chutes, maintain speeds that would earn a car a ticket, and keep my turns so tight in the trees I’ll emerge with moss on my jacket. But the thing I never learned to do properly is to jump. In those days it was illegal and I nearly lost a lift ticket once for catching air off a mogul. Decades later, once my skis leave earth, I still have all the control of space trash. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.919195830821991}
I have come to Woodward to change that. That warehouse holds 66,000 square feet of total kid heaven, a palace full of Olympic-size trampolines, ramps and spring floors, where you can learn to fling yourself off things, over things, down things, even up things. Cavernous foam pits and an airbag with a pressure-monitoring system can transform what would have been a trip to the E.R. into a harmless flop on a featherbed. Master your moves inside and you can head outside to find more features. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.93373042345047}
“We had a guy who always wanted to do a back flip on skis for his birthday,” says Matt Peterson, the marketing and brand director for Woodward Mountain Centers. “By the end of the day he was doing it, and he was 70.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9461979866027832}
Today is a Tuesday, not too busy, and kids are blasting off the biggest jump, a 10-foot-high monster with a foam pit deep enough to consume all traces of them upon impact. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5686957836151123}
“Did you see that?” beams a boy in a black T-shirt after a back flip on his scooter. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.6815855503082275}
“Dude, that was awesome,” says the other. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4841097891330719}
For me, things are not so awesome. I’ve been here for hours and I’m still quivering atop the tiniest of the ramps, a relaxed U-shape formation with a three-foot jump that’s perfectly arced for an up-and-out trajectory. I’ve been hurling myself off this thing while wearing special roller skis that I can neither stop nor turn. Once I shove off I’m at the mercy of physics and the airbag, which after 40 — 50? 60? — crashes will still leave you bruised and bleeding. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9315299391746521}
Max Leabman, a 33-year-old skiing and snowboarding coach, stands ready to film me in slow motion. I’ve hired him to teach me to do the only trick I have ever wanted to do, the simplest of tricks, the one that forms the basis for so many other tricks. A 360. That’s one full spin in the air. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9188997149467468}
“You got this,” Max says. “Confidence and commitment.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.403048038482666}
“Confidence and commitment,” I repeat, and push off down the ramp. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.53740394115448}
Of the Olympic events that made their debuts at the Winter Games in Beijing this year, to me, nothing brings awe like the new big-air skiing event. To watch a breakable human roar 200-vertical-feet down a black-diamond-steep slope, hit a 16-foot-tall ramp at 40 m.p.h., soar 80 feet or more through the air, all while spinning and flipping, and somehow having enough “air awareness,” strength and flexibility to cross skis or to reach down and grab them for style points mid-flight — and then touch down with skis perfectly aligned on another steep slope, often backward: It’s enough to leave even veteran commentators flabbergasted. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9814745187759399}
Consider the X Games in January in Aspen, when the Park City local and Olympian Alex Hall performed an electrifying “switch double-cork twenty-one sixty Buick-grab” a new trick whereby he hit the jump facing backward (switch), did six full spins (2,160 degrees), two of them so off-axis they looked more like spirals (double cork, like a corkscrew), all while reaching his right arm across his chest to grab his right ski, now behind him (a Buick grab), and then untangled himself to land at high speed, backward, again. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9925469756126404}
“No way,” shouted the announcer, Tom Wallisch, a former X Games gold medalist, who asked for a slow-motion replay. “I need Alex to just tell me what he just did.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.651742696762085}
Of course, Mr. Hall, 23, an Olympic favorite, was building upon a long lineage of skiers who saw the doors that a little hang time could open. Stein Eriksen, “the father of freestyle skiing” threw gorgeous, swan-diving front flips in the 1950s and ’60s. The hot-doggers of the ’70s, like Wayne Wong, popularized more upright tricks, like the “daffy,” the air-walking, front-split-like strut best performed while wearing neon. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.986375629901886}
Then came snowboarding. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.9689128398895264}
Ski areas in the 1980s, after years of resistance, eventually embraced the rapscallion world of “snow surfing.” Soon ski resorts lifted bans on jumping and built skateboard-like “snowboard parks” that evolved into today’s terrain parks, with an array of half pipes, kickers, tabletops, boxes and rails. With these new features and attitudes, tricks became less about rigid gymnastics and more about style. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9544527530670166}
Skiing quickly followed suit as companies like Salomon in 1998 marketed skis with “twin tips” for riding backward like snowboards could, but the “freeskiing” uptake still took time. In 2002, the mogul skier Jonny Moseley had to convince Olympic judges at the Winter Games in Park City that his “dinner roll,” a 720-degree, off-axis spin, didn’t violate fusty rules against inverted aerials since his ankles technically never went above his head. His execution was flawless, but the panel wasn’t wowed and Moseley took 4th. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9929162263870239}
Today, the repertoire of tricks is staggering, as is the language used to describe them. “Safety grab double rodeo.” “Switch right quad cork 1620.” “Cab 5 double grab.” But at the root of these high-octane showpieces lies someone who began by mastering the humble 360. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9223352670669556}
“That was the first trick I got good at,” Mr. Hall told me shortly before heading to Beijing, where he would win gold in the slopestyle skiing event. “The 360 is like the first piece in a puzzle you can use to put different tricks together to make more complicated tricks.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.972802460193634}
The word for that step-by-step approach is called “progression,” and you hear it a lot at Woodward. The company started in 1970 in Woodward, Penn., as a gymnastics camp, but has long since branched out into bike parks, skateparks and terrain parks at ski areas in Vermont, California, Colorado and Oregon. In 2009, Woodward opened its first indoor mountain center in Copper, Colo. The one in Park City opened in late 2019. At each facility, the idea is the same: Start small to go big. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9839966893196106}
“Gymnastics really is terrific at figuring out how to take you along in steps,” said Phoebe Mills, Woodward Park City’s general manager, a snowboarder and a 1988 Olympic bronze medalist on the balance beam. “That’s the basis for what we’re doing.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8704157471656799}
Max, my coach, seemed confident my skiing experience and the progression method would have me doing 360s in a few hours. I met him midmorning, signed some waivers, and followed him out onto a red spring floor in my jeans, a T-shirt and socks. He pointed to a line on the floor. I stood on it. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9788903594017029}
The first step to any trick is the “pop,” a snappy, two-footed jump you must time right as you take off from the ramp. A good pop sends you on a stable, balanced flight path. A poor pop spells disaster. People get scared on approach and lean back, which sends their feet shooting out from under them. Being “in the back seat,” as skiers say, strips you of all landing gear but your coccyx. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9779155850410461}
On the floor, my pop was Olympian. Max asked me to jump and spin 180 degrees around to land back on the line. I did that by naturally rotating to the left. This was Max’s first clue about me. From then on he would focus on my dominant, “natural” direction of spin to the left, leaving the lessons on “unnatural” spins to the right for another time. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7232328057289124}
Max asked me to try a full spin. He showed me how to use my arms to set the rotation in motion, and how to look over my left shoulder and lead with my left elbow until I could see forward. “Don’t worry about your legs,” he said. “Bottom follows top.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8496609926223755}
He popped, spun and landed on the line as if he were a rotary dial. I was certain I could do this, too, but I could not. I fell to the left. I fell to the right. I fell forward. I was never anything but an average athlete; now I didn’t even feel average. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6101000308990479}
Max suggested we move to the trampolines where some extra airtime might help me make it around. It didn’t. Instead, it just exaggerated my flaws. Part of this was physics. I’m shaped like a misfit carrot — long and thin — and staying on axis is hard for carrots. Mostly, my balance — my joints, muscles and reflexes — really aren’t what they were. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9136992692947388}
Soon I was sweating profusely, and I could hear blood marching around in my ears. Doubt set in. I hadn’t even been here an hour. A boy, maybe 8 years old, stood by, watching me suffer. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5553540587425232}
“You’re doing great,” he said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5559622049331665}
Max agreed: “I think you’re ready.” {'label': 'Position', 'score': 0.34212109446525574}
Things got real when Max handed me some training skis called “ParkSkis,” which were about three-feet long with eight, small, white wheels mounted in such a way that the skis could roll closer to the ground than even a skateboard would. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7887966632843018}
To get used to them, Max took me upstairs to a pump track, an undulating pathway made of a material called Skatelite. The idea is to use only your body in an up-and-down pumping motion to generate momentum. The skis felt more like awkward roller skates, and the Skatelite was surprisingly slick, but I zipped to the other side with ease. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9727576971054077}
“These feel great,” I said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3932114541530609}
“It’s time, then.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4566783607006073}
Max took me to the top of the ramp with the airbag to practice trickless jumps, or “straight airs,” with good pop. This was much harder than standing still on the spring floor, but with each attempt, my pop improved. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8968579769134521}
At the top again, Max asked me to visualize a 360. I pictured pumping down the in-run with bent knees, arms out, chin high, ready to spin as I approached the ramp. In the air I’d be calm with my knees slightly drawn, my gaze pegged over my left shoulder with my left elbow pulling me around. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8793362975120544}
“Here we go,” Max said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3223586678504944}
I shoved off, but panic struck as I felt the skis tipping skyward. My pop fizzed and pitched me to starboard. I landed sideways and toppled over hard. Outside, my day would have been over. In here, the friction of my arm against the airbag relieved me of a tiny patch of skin. “A Woodward tattoo,” Max said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5288050174713135}
I tried and failed again. And again, and again. Max showed me replays in slow motion and the problem was obvious: I would begin my spin, but hold it only until I was halfway around. Instead of leading with my left elbow, I’d inexplicably send my arms back to the right. This created failure every time. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8981600403785706}
I kept at it for what felt like hours. My tattoo became two tattoos and then a pair of hot wounds. My legs ached. My arms ached. My abdomen ached from crawling out of the airbag so many times. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8996039628982544}
But then, magic. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8502355813980103}
“I want you to reach your left hand behind you and grab your right bum,” Max said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4235442280769348}
“Grab my bum?” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6653772592544556}
“And don’t let go,” he said. “You got this. Remember, confidence and commitment.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4602450132369995}
I stopped thinking. In the air my head stayed high. I looked over my shoulder and reached around for my right bum, but before I felt anything, I saw something. It was gray and poofy and straight ahead — the airbag. This is what they mean by “spot your landing.” I stayed calm. My legs came around and I touched down upright at last. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.6304692029953003}
“That’s it!” Max boomed, asking me to do it again. “Two for true.” {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.21935917437076569}
But I was so exhausted I could do no more. Back at the hotel, I ate four ibuprofens and was fast asleep by 8 p.m. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8763977885246277}
The next day, I rallied and took it outside. I was sore, but on snow, I felt like me again. Max said my brain overnight had internalized the muscle memory. He got me doing 180s, then 270s where I let my skis slide the rest of the way around. These alone felt like accomplishments. The fear turned to fun. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.962215006351471}
In the end, I did it: the lamest, most ridiculous 360 you ever saw, but I made it all the way around, in the air. Max, the consummate coach, let me have my greatness. “This is why I do this,” he said. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.9438132047653198}
The best twist happened at home, though. On skis on my hill in Oregon, I now see every bump and feature differently. And sometimes as I race toward them I let myself wonder what else I might do. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.5793128609657288}
Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places list for 2022. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.620608389377594}

I hurt. Claim Constellations of sallow contusions pulse on my legs, and my elbows resemble raw meat. Sweat soaks my helmet and drips into my ski boots. I have fallen more today than in all of my 35 years of skiing. And yet, I’m grateful. This could be so much worse. It’s a brittle, 20-degree day in Park City, Utah, and feeble sunlight falls through the holes in the clouds. It is here in the spectacular Wasatch Mountains, 40 miles east of Salt Lake City, that you’ll find some of the country’s most famous ski areas. There’s Deer Valley, with its fizzy spas and brilliant glades, and Park City Mountain, a sprawling giant with heated lifts and 7,300 acres of terrain. Evidence But I’m at a place called Woodward, which sits off Interstate 80 near a Phillips 66. There are no condos or restaurants with menus announcing bison in beurre. Woodward does have a ski lift, a few short runs and what looks like a warehouse. You can drive right by and not even notice it, but you should. This is where you come to up your game, literally. Rebuttal I learned to ski fairly young, and as a result, even now, well into my middle-age years, there are few slopes that scare me. I can fight my way down narrow chutes, maintain speeds that would earn a car a ticket, and keep my turns so tight in the trees I’ll emerge with moss on my jacket. But the thing I never learned to do properly is to jump. In those days it was illegal and I nearly lost a lift ticket once for catching air off a mogul. Decades later, once my skis leave earth, I still have all the control of space trash. I have come to Woodward to change that. That warehouse holds 66,000 square feet of total kid heaven, a palace full of Olympic-size trampolines, ramps and spring floors, where you can learn to fling yourself off things, over things, down things, even up things. Cavernous foam pits and an airbag with a pressure-monitoring system can transform what would have been a trip to the E.R. into a harmless flop on a featherbed. Master your moves inside and you can head outside to find more features. “We had a guy who always wanted to do a back flip on skis for his birthday,” says Matt Peterson, the marketing and brand director for Woodward Mountain Centers. “By the end of the day he was doing it, and he was 70.” Today is a Tuesday, not too busy, and kids are blasting off the biggest jump, a 10-foot-high monster with a foam pit deep enough to consume all traces of them upon impact. Evidence “Did you see that?” beams a boy in a black T-shirt after a back flip on his scooter. Lead “Dude, that was awesome,” says the other. Claim For me, things are not so awesome. I’ve been here for hours and I’m still quivering atop the tiniest of the ramps, a relaxed U-shape formation with a three-foot jump that’s perfectly arced for an up-and-out trajectory. I’ve been hurling myself off this thing while wearing special roller skis that I can neither stop nor turn. Once I shove off I’m at the mercy of physics and the airbag, which after 40 — 50? 60? — crashes will still leave you bruised and bleeding. Max Leabman, a 33-year-old skiing and snowboarding coach, stands ready to film me in slow motion. I’ve hired him to teach me to do the only trick I have ever wanted to do, the simplest of tricks, the one that forms the basis for so many other tricks. A 360. That’s one full spin in the air. Evidence “You got this,” Max says. “Confidence and commitment.” “Confidence and commitment,” I repeat, and push off down the ramp. Claim Of the Olympic events that made their debuts at the Winter Games in Beijing this year, to me, nothing brings awe like the new big-air skiing event. To watch a breakable human roar 200-vertical-feet down a black-diamond-steep slope, hit a 16-foot-tall ramp at 40 m.p.h., soar 80 feet or more through the air, all while spinning and flipping, and somehow having enough “air awareness,” strength and flexibility to cross skis or to reach down and grab them for style points mid-flight — and then touch down with skis perfectly aligned on another steep slope, often backward: It’s enough to leave even veteran commentators flabbergasted. Consider the X Games in January in Aspen, when the Park City local and Olympian Alex Hall performed an electrifying “switch double-cork twenty-one sixty Buick-grab” a new trick whereby he hit the jump facing backward (switch), did six full spins (2,160 degrees), two of them so off-axis they looked more like spirals (double cork, like a corkscrew), all while reaching his right arm across his chest to grab his right ski, now behind him (a Buick grab), and then untangled himself to land at high speed, backward, again. “No way,” shouted the announcer, Tom Wallisch, a former X Games gold medalist, who asked for a slow-motion replay. “I need Alex to just tell me what he just did.” Of course, Mr. Hall, 23, an Olympic favorite, was building upon a long lineage of skiers who saw the doors that a little hang time could open. Stein Eriksen, “the father of freestyle skiing” threw gorgeous, swan-diving front flips in the 1950s and ’60s. The hot-doggers of the ’70s, like Wayne Wong, popularized more upright tricks, like the “daffy,” the air-walking, front-split-like strut best performed while wearing neon. Evidence Then came snowboarding. Claim Ski areas in the 1980s, after years of resistance, eventually embraced the rapscallion world of “snow surfing.” Soon ski resorts lifted bans on jumping and built skateboard-like “snowboard parks” that evolved into today’s terrain parks, with an array of half pipes, kickers, tabletops, boxes and rails. With these new features and attitudes, tricks became less about rigid gymnastics and more about style. Skiing quickly followed suit as companies like Salomon in 1998 marketed skis with “twin tips” for riding backward like snowboards could, but the “freeskiing” uptake still took time. In 2002, the mogul skier Jonny Moseley had to convince Olympic judges at the Winter Games in Park City that his “dinner roll,” a 720-degree, off-axis spin, didn’t violate fusty rules against inverted aerials since his ankles technically never went above his head. His execution was flawless, but the panel wasn’t wowed and Moseley took 4th. Today, the repertoire of tricks is staggering, as is the language used to describe them. “Safety grab double rodeo.” “Switch right quad cork 1620.” “Cab 5 double grab.” But at the root of these high-octane showpieces lies someone who began by mastering the humble 360. “That was the first trick I got good at,” Mr. Hall told me shortly before heading to Beijing, where he would win gold in the slopestyle skiing event. “The 360 is like the first piece in a puzzle you can use to put different tricks together to make more complicated tricks.” The word for that step-by-step approach is called “progression,” and you hear it a lot at Woodward. The company started in 1970 in Woodward, Penn., as a gymnastics camp, but has long since branched out into bike parks, skateparks and terrain parks at ski areas in Vermont, California, Colorado and Oregon. In 2009, Woodward opened its first indoor mountain center in Copper, Colo. The one in Park City opened in late 2019. At each facility, the idea is the same: Start small to go big. “Gymnastics really is terrific at figuring out how to take you along in steps,” said Phoebe Mills, Woodward Park City’s general manager, a snowboarder and a 1988 Olympic bronze medalist on the balance beam. “That’s the basis for what we’re doing.” Max, my coach, seemed confident my skiing experience and the progression method would have me doing 360s in a few hours. I met him midmorning, signed some waivers, and followed him out onto a red spring floor in my jeans, a T-shirt and socks. He pointed to a line on the floor. I stood on it. The first step to any trick is the “pop,” a snappy, two-footed jump you must time right as you take off from the ramp. A good pop sends you on a stable, balanced flight path. A poor pop spells disaster. People get scared on approach and lean back, which sends their feet shooting out from under them. Being “in the back seat,” as skiers say, strips you of all landing gear but your coccyx. On the floor, my pop was Olympian. Max asked me to jump and spin 180 degrees around to land back on the line. I did that by naturally rotating to the left. This was Max’s first clue about me. From then on he would focus on my dominant, “natural” direction of spin to the left, leaving the lessons on “unnatural” spins to the right for another time. Max asked me to try a full spin. He showed me how to use my arms to set the rotation in motion, and how to look over my left shoulder and lead with my left elbow until I could see forward. “Don’t worry about your legs,” he said. “Bottom follows top.” He popped, spun and landed on the line as if he were a rotary dial. I was certain I could do this, too, but I could not. I fell to the left. I fell to the right. I fell forward. I was never anything but an average athlete; now I didn’t even feel average. Max suggested we move to the trampolines where some extra airtime might help me make it around. It didn’t. Instead, it just exaggerated my flaws. Part of this was physics. I’m shaped like a misfit carrot — long and thin — and staying on axis is hard for carrots. Mostly, my balance — my joints, muscles and reflexes — really aren’t what they were. Soon I was sweating profusely, and I could hear blood marching around in my ears. Doubt set in. I hadn’t even been here an hour. A boy, maybe 8 years old, stood by, watching me suffer. Evidence “You’re doing great,” he said. Claim Max agreed: “I think you’re ready.” Position Things got real when Max handed me some training skis called “ParkSkis,” which were about three-feet long with eight, small, white wheels mounted in such a way that the skis could roll closer to the ground than even a skateboard would. To get used to them, Max took me upstairs to a pump track, an undulating pathway made of a material called Skatelite. The idea is to use only your body in an up-and-down pumping motion to generate momentum. The skis felt more like awkward roller skates, and the Skatelite was surprisingly slick, but I zipped to the other side with ease. Evidence “These feel great,” I said. “It’s time, then.” Claim Max took me to the top of the ramp with the airbag to practice trickless jumps, or “straight airs,” with good pop. This was much harder than standing still on the spring floor, but with each attempt, my pop improved. At the top again, Max asked me to visualize a 360. I pictured pumping down the in-run with bent knees, arms out, chin high, ready to spin as I approached the ramp. In the air I’d be calm with my knees slightly drawn, my gaze pegged over my left shoulder with my left elbow pulling me around. Evidence “Here we go,” Max said. Claim I shoved off, but panic struck as I felt the skis tipping skyward. My pop fizzed and pitched me to starboard. I landed sideways and toppled over hard. Outside, my day would have been over. In here, the friction of my arm against the airbag relieved me of a tiny patch of skin. “A Woodward tattoo,” Max said. I tried and failed again. And again, and again. Max showed me replays in slow motion and the problem was obvious: I would begin my spin, but hold it only until I was halfway around. Instead of leading with my left elbow, I’d inexplicably send my arms back to the right. This created failure every time. I kept at it for what felt like hours. My tattoo became two tattoos and then a pair of hot wounds. My legs ached. My arms ached. My abdomen ached from crawling out of the airbag so many times. Evidence But then, magic. Rebuttal “I want you to reach your left hand behind you and grab your right bum,” Max said. Evidence “Grab my bum?” Claim “And don’t let go,” he said. “You got this. Remember, confidence and commitment.” Evidence I stopped thinking. In the air my head stayed high. I looked over my shoulder and reached around for my right bum, but before I felt anything, I saw something. It was gray and poofy and straight ahead — the airbag. This is what they mean by “spot your landing.” I stayed calm. My legs came around and I touched down upright at last. “That’s it!” Max boomed, asking me to do it again. “Two for true.” Lead But I was so exhausted I could do no more. Back at the hotel, I ate four ibuprofens and was fast asleep by 8 p.m. Rebuttal The next day, I rallied and took it outside. I was sore, but on snow, I felt like me again. Max said my brain overnight had internalized the muscle memory. He got me doing 180s, then 270s where I let my skis slide the rest of the way around. These alone felt like accomplishments. The fear turned to fun. Evidence In the end, I did it: the lamest, most ridiculous 360 you ever saw, but I made it all the way around, in the air. Max, the consummate coach, let me have my greatness. “This is why I do this,” he said. Concluding Statement The best twist happened at home, though. On skis on my hill in Oregon, I now see every bump and feature differently. And sometimes as I race toward them I let myself wonder what else I might do. Counterclaim Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places list for 2022. Evidence

nytimes\smartphones-iphone-android.txt

Using custom data configuration default-5e47972a68c07251

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-5e47972a68c07251\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-5e47972a68c07251\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. Here is a collection of past columns. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.7628713846206665}
I’m going to pose an intentionally provocative question: What if smartphones are so successful and useful that they are holding back innovation? {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4370291829109192}
Technologists are now imagining what could be the next big thing. But there may never be anything else like the smartphone, the first and perhaps last mass market and globally transformative computer. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.2987073063850403}
I may wind up looking like a 19th-century futurist who couldn’t imagine that horses would be replaced by cars. But let me make the case that the phenomenon of the smartphone may never be replicated. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.2944008409976959}
First, when people in technology imagine the future, they’re implicitly betting that smartphones will be displaced as the center of our digital lives by things that are less obvious — not slabs that pull us away from our world but technologies that are almost indistinguishable from the air that we breathe. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8940190672874451}
Virtual reality goggles are bulky annoyances now, but the bet is that tech like V.R. or computers that can “learn” like people will eventually blur the line between online and real life, and between human and computer, to the point of erasure. That’s the vision behind the “metaverse,” a broad vision that virtual human interactions will be as complex as the real thing. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5001090168952942}
Perhaps you’re thinking that more immersive and human-ish technologies sound intriguing, or maybe they seem like the woo-woo dreams of kooks. (Or maybe a little of both.) Either way, technologists must prove to us that the future they imagine is more compelling and useful than the digital life that we already have thanks to the magical supercomputers in our pockets. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.4660225808620453}
The challenge for any new technology is that smartphones succeeded to the point where it’s hard to imagine alternatives. In a sales boom that lasted about a decade, the devices transformed from a novelty for rich nerds to the only computer that billions of people around the world have ever owned. Smartphones have succeeded to the point where we don’t need to pay them much notice. (Yes, that includes the incrementally updated iPhone models that Apple talked about on Tuesday.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5197878479957581}
The allure of these devices in our lives and in technologists’ imaginations is so powerful that any new technology now has to exist almost in opposition to the smartphone. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5592316389083862}
When my colleague Mike Isaac tried Facebook’s new model of glasses that can snap photos with a tap on the temple, a company executive said to him: “Isn’t that better than having to take out your phone and hold it in front of your face every time you want to capture a moment?” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8530747294425964}
I get the executive’s point. It’s true that devices like the Apple Watch, Facebook’s glasses and Snap’s Spectacles are clever about making features of smartphones less obtrusive. Companies including Facebook, Snap and Apple are also working on eyewear that — like the failed Google Glass — aims to combine digital information like maps with what we see around us. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5752253532409668}
The comment also shows that any new consumer technology will have to answer the inevitable questions: Why should I buy another gadget to take photos, flip through cycling directions or play music when I can do most of that with the smartphone that’s already in my pocket? Do I need to live in the metaverse when I have a similar experience in the rectangular screen of my phone? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8428219556808472}
Smartphones are unlikely to be the apotheosis of technology, and I am curious to see the development of technologies that want to move away from them. But at least for now, and maybe forever, most technologies for our daily lives are supplements to our phones rather than replacements. These tiny computers may be so darn handy that there will never be a post-smartphone revolution. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.7406272888183594}
Should you buy a new phone now? In a recent column, my colleague Brian X. Chen walked through the questions to ask if you’re thinking about swapping your smartphone for a fresh model: Can you repair what makes your phone annoying rather than replace it? Can you still get software updates with the existing model? How would a new phone change your life? {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.9716649651527405}
We wanted flying cars and we got an $850 robot vacuum that steers around dog doo: To build the latest Roomba, the company “built over 100 physical models of pet droppings, and trained algorithms on over a hundred thousand images to get the device to avoid crap,” The Washington Post writes. Also, the robots collect a lot of data from inside your home. (The Roomba is still confused by black striped carpet, though.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9928025603294373}
“It’s a startlingly dark show, and that’s on purpose.” This is a thought-provoking essay about a new streaming video series focused on a TikTok-famous family that humanizes the people who are thrust into social media celebrity. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3021480441093445}
Check out these video clips from a nest of barred owls in Indiana. Baby owls learning to fly really are the cutest things. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7627251744270325}
We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.39380958676338196}
If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. You can also read past On Tech columns. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.4619752764701843}

This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. Here is a collection of past columns. Lead I’m going to pose an intentionally provocative question: What if smartphones are so successful and useful that they are holding back innovation? Technologists are now imagining what could be the next big thing. But there may never be anything else like the smartphone, the first and perhaps last mass market and globally transformative computer. Claim I may wind up looking like a 19th-century futurist who couldn’t imagine that horses would be replaced by cars. But let me make the case that the phenomenon of the smartphone may never be replicated. Evidence First, when people in technology imagine the future, they’re implicitly betting that smartphones will be displaced as the center of our digital lives by things that are less obvious — not slabs that pull us away from our world but technologies that are almost indistinguishable from the air that we breathe. Claim Virtual reality goggles are bulky annoyances now, but the bet is that tech like V.R. or computers that can “learn” like people will eventually blur the line between online and real life, and between human and computer, to the point of erasure. That’s the vision behind the “metaverse,” a broad vision that virtual human interactions will be as complex as the real thing. Evidence Perhaps you’re thinking that more immersive and human-ish technologies sound intriguing, or maybe they seem like the woo-woo dreams of kooks. (Or maybe a little of both.) Either way, technologists must prove to us that the future they imagine is more compelling and useful than the digital life that we already have thanks to the magical supercomputers in our pockets. Concluding Statement The challenge for any new technology is that smartphones succeeded to the point where it’s hard to imagine alternatives. In a sales boom that lasted about a decade, the devices transformed from a novelty for rich nerds to the only computer that billions of people around the world have ever owned. Smartphones have succeeded to the point where we don’t need to pay them much notice. (Yes, that includes the incrementally updated iPhone models that Apple talked about on Tuesday.) Evidence The allure of these devices in our lives and in technologists’ imaginations is so powerful that any new technology now has to exist almost in opposition to the smartphone. Claim When my colleague Mike Isaac tried Facebook’s new model of glasses that can snap photos with a tap on the temple, a company executive said to him: “Isn’t that better than having to take out your phone and hold it in front of your face every time you want to capture a moment?” I get the executive’s point. It’s true that devices like the Apple Watch, Facebook’s glasses and Snap’s Spectacles are clever about making features of smartphones less obtrusive. Companies including Facebook, Snap and Apple are also working on eyewear that — like the failed Google Glass — aims to combine digital information like maps with what we see around us. The comment also shows that any new consumer technology will have to answer the inevitable questions: Why should I buy another gadget to take photos, flip through cycling directions or play music when I can do most of that with the smartphone that’s already in my pocket? Do I need to live in the metaverse when I have a similar experience in the rectangular screen of my phone? Evidence Smartphones are unlikely to be the apotheosis of technology, and I am curious to see the development of technologies that want to move away from them. But at least for now, and maybe forever, most technologies for our daily lives are supplements to our phones rather than replacements. These tiny computers may be so darn handy that there will never be a post-smartphone revolution. Concluding Statement Should you buy a new phone now? In a recent column, my colleague Brian X. Chen walked through the questions to ask if you’re thinking about swapping your smartphone for a fresh model: Can you repair what makes your phone annoying rather than replace it? Can you still get software updates with the existing model? How would a new phone change your life? Lead We wanted flying cars and we got an $850 robot vacuum that steers around dog doo: To build the latest Roomba, the company “built over 100 physical models of pet droppings, and trained algorithms on over a hundred thousand images to get the device to avoid crap,” The Washington Post writes. Also, the robots collect a lot of data from inside your home. (The Roomba is still confused by black striped carpet, though.) “It’s a startlingly dark show, and that’s on purpose.” This is a thought-provoking essay about a new streaming video series focused on a TikTok-famous family that humanizes the people who are thrust into social media celebrity. Check out these video clips from a nest of barred owls in Indiana. Baby owls learning to fly really are the cutest things. We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. Evidence If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. You can also read past On Tech columns. Concluding Statement

nytimes\space-china-billionaires.txt

Using custom data configuration default-6e60a68d7da07034

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-6e60a68d7da07034\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-6e60a68d7da07034\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

The crowds that cheered the astronaut — about a quarter-million in Washington, four million in New York — adorned themselves in numerous ways. Some wore space helmets fashioned from cardboard and plastic. Others, less showily, wore buttons proclaiming John Glenn “the New Frontier man of the year,” a nod to John F. Kennedy’s famous phrase. Sixty years ago, Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth, opening up the frontier of human exploration in space — a frontier that stretched to the moon and beyond. The flight of Friendship 7 made it all seem possible. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9863634705543518}
Glenn’s feat marked the start of a spectacular decade: spacewalks, trips around the moon, six lunar landings. Then the frontier receded. Since 1972, no human being has ventured outside Earth’s orbit. A generation has reached middle age without any memory of Americans on the moon. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7229626178741455}
That could change soon. If NASA’s plan holds, its Artemis program will land the first woman and the first person of color on the moon in 2025. And this, NASA says, is just the beginning. The agency envisions at least 10 lunar landings. Its administrator, Bill Nelson, is waging a campaign to beat other nations in placing “boots on the moon” — not just boots but also, in time, a base. And “the sooner we get to the moon,” NASA has said, “the sooner we get American astronauts to Mars.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9384135007858276}
But why bother? There is certainly much of interest on Mars — NASA’s newest rover, Perseverance, and its companion, the tiny helicopter Ingenuity, have made that clearer than ever. What is less evident is the role, the value, of human explorers. To most Americans, machines seem sufficient to the task. A Morning Consult poll last year showed a general interest in space exploration but not in having humans do the exploring. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.6711912155151367}
In 1961, when Kennedy proposed to send Americans to the moon, a senator warned that the administration had “a lot of missionary work” to do. That is surely the case today. Mr. Nelson has been making a persistent pitch for funding, but Congress appears unpersuaded. President Biden, for his part, has signaled support for Artemis but is more focused on the nation’s commercial and military capabilities in space, as well as the vantage point that space provides to observe climate change. Vice President Kamala Harris, the chair of the National Space Council, rarely mentions human spaceflight, stressing instead “the responsibility to look to our home planet.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9336176514625549}
And reasonably so. Our planet has plenty to worry about, not least the damage we do to its atmosphere. But there is an argument to be made for the human exploration of space — a better argument, at least, than the White House and NASA have put forward. If the administration fails to sharpen and press its case, if it shies from insisting that humans, not just our inventions, should roam the heavens, the United States will likely cede the moon — and a good deal more than that — to more determined competitors. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5145211219787598}
Chief among them is China. Its goal is plain: to become a “great space power,” as President Xi Jinping has said. China’s Mars rover, arriving on the heels of our own, has been an impressive success; China also has a probe on the far side of the moon — a first for any nation. Its space station is nearly complete, while the International Space Station, after more than two decades orbiting Earth, approaches obsolescence and NASA turns to private companies to build and run its successors. Like the United States, China hopes to build a research station on the lunar surface. Unlike the United States, China gives no reason to doubt its resolve. It will also have a partner: Russia. The two countries have already begun to align their efforts. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9887519478797913}
Mr. Nelson cites an “aggressive” China as a reason for Americans to “get off our duff,” but a few national security questions require a fuller airing. What if, for example, China stakes out strategic positions on the moon? What if it asserts control over the resources it and other nations are searching for there: silicon, titanium and, not least, the water that is needed to sustain a human settlement? As Namrata Goswami, an expert on China’s space policy, has argued, “An advantage in accessing the vast wealth of the inner solar system could have an effect on the balance of power” on Earth. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9868757724761963}
If anyone is as bullish on the new frontier as China, it is the billionaires. Their ambitions, too, should spur NASA to stay in the game. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk might or might not be visionaries, but they are easily the most powerful people on this planet to speak with a straight face about colonizing other ones. Mr. Musk warns of an “extinction event” that will require us to leave Earth behind. There is a certain egalitarianism in the idea of an escape hatch for humanity, though it is the egalitarianism of rats leaving a sinking (or overheating) ship. It would have to get pretty bad down here before ordinary people follow the billionaires into the black void of space rather than bid them adieu. Mr. Musk’s product placement of a Tesla in orbit and Mr. Bezos’ postflight performance in his cowboy hat leave one wary of their motives and nostalgic for the military bearing of Glenn. If space travel lost its novelty in the early 1970s, it might now be in the process of losing its dignity. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9415307641029358}
Of course, this takes nothing away from the achievements of Mr. Musk’s aerospace company, SpaceX. Rarely in any industry has such boldness of imagination been matched by such brilliance in execution. The company is an indispensable partner to NASA; a SpaceX landing system will carry astronauts to and from the moon’s surface. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6365259885787964}
But there is an essential difference between exploration and colonization, and both are a far cry from commercialization. Left to the billionaires, space is less likely to become a haven for humanity than a playground for its wealthiest members. In that event, there will be no more John Glenns — no more astronauts to look up to and emulate, astronauts whose humility and awe in the vastness of space define them as much as their bravery does. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8025639653205872}
“The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not,” Kennedy said in 1962 at Rice University, warning that “no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space.” Perhaps this logic has lost its power; perhaps Americans don’t care if the billionaires and China have the moon to themselves. The idea of space as a new frontier, too, might be tired, overworked. (During the Super Bowl, a Salesforce ad dismissed it with an “Eh.”) But the thrilling discoveries by Perseverance — the evidence of ancient Martian river deltas and lava flows — give eloquent testimony to the mysteries that await on the frontier. Robots like these are stunningly capable. Still, they cannot invent or imagine; they cannot drive the process of discovery in space any more than they do here on Earth. Only humans can lead, and to lead, humans must go. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9639468789100647}
Science “is simply the exploration of the unknown,” James Head, a planetary geologist at Brown who helped train the Apollo astronauts, told me, adding that “the moon is unknown. Mars is unknown.” Perhaps this is what NASA should say, and without apology: We don’t know what we’ll find. We don’t know what the moon and Mars can tell us about the origins of the universe and life on Earth and possibly beyond it. And that, above all, is the reason for going. Six days after his return to Earth, Glenn addressed a joint meeting of Congress. “What benefits are we gaining from the money spent?” he asked, acknowledging that it was too early to say. “But exploration and the pursuit of knowledge,” he said, “have always paid dividends in the long run — usually far greater than anything expected at the outset.” Why bother? This is why. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5933249592781067}

The crowds that cheered the astronaut — about a quarter-million in Washington, four million in New York — adorned themselves in numerous ways. Some wore space helmets fashioned from cardboard and plastic. Others, less showily, wore buttons proclaiming John Glenn “the New Frontier man of the year,” a nod to John F. Kennedy’s famous phrase. Sixty years ago, Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth, opening up the frontier of human exploration in space — a frontier that stretched to the moon and beyond. The flight of Friendship 7 made it all seem possible. Glenn’s feat marked the start of a spectacular decade: spacewalks, trips around the moon, six lunar landings. Then the frontier receded. Since 1972, no human being has ventured outside Earth’s orbit. A generation has reached middle age without any memory of Americans on the moon. That could change soon. If NASA’s plan holds, its Artemis program will land the first woman and the first person of color on the moon in 2025. And this, NASA says, is just the beginning. The agency envisions at least 10 lunar landings. Its administrator, Bill Nelson, is waging a campaign to beat other nations in placing “boots on the moon” — not just boots but also, in time, a base. And “the sooner we get to the moon,” NASA has said, “the sooner we get American astronauts to Mars.” Evidence But why bother? There is certainly much of interest on Mars — NASA’s newest rover, Perseverance, and its companion, the tiny helicopter Ingenuity, have made that clearer than ever. What is less evident is the role, the value, of human explorers. To most Americans, machines seem sufficient to the task. A Morning Consult poll last year showed a general interest in space exploration but not in having humans do the exploring. Rebuttal In 1961, when Kennedy proposed to send Americans to the moon, a senator warned that the administration had “a lot of missionary work” to do. That is surely the case today. Mr. Nelson has been making a persistent pitch for funding, but Congress appears unpersuaded. President Biden, for his part, has signaled support for Artemis but is more focused on the nation’s commercial and military capabilities in space, as well as the vantage point that space provides to observe climate change. Vice President Kamala Harris, the chair of the National Space Council, rarely mentions human spaceflight, stressing instead “the responsibility to look to our home planet.” And reasonably so. Our planet has plenty to worry about, not least the damage we do to its atmosphere. But there is an argument to be made for the human exploration of space — a better argument, at least, than the White House and NASA have put forward. If the administration fails to sharpen and press its case, if it shies from insisting that humans, not just our inventions, should roam the heavens, the United States will likely cede the moon — and a good deal more than that — to more determined competitors. Chief among them is China. Its goal is plain: to become a “great space power,” as President Xi Jinping has said. China’s Mars rover, arriving on the heels of our own, has been an impressive success; China also has a probe on the far side of the moon — a first for any nation. Its space station is nearly complete, while the International Space Station, after more than two decades orbiting Earth, approaches obsolescence and NASA turns to private companies to build and run its successors. Like the United States, China hopes to build a research station on the lunar surface. Unlike the United States, China gives no reason to doubt its resolve. It will also have a partner: Russia. The two countries have already begun to align their efforts. Mr. Nelson cites an “aggressive” China as a reason for Americans to “get off our duff,” but a few national security questions require a fuller airing. What if, for example, China stakes out strategic positions on the moon? What if it asserts control over the resources it and other nations are searching for there: silicon, titanium and, not least, the water that is needed to sustain a human settlement? As Namrata Goswami, an expert on China’s space policy, has argued, “An advantage in accessing the vast wealth of the inner solar system could have an effect on the balance of power” on Earth. If anyone is as bullish on the new frontier as China, it is the billionaires. Their ambitions, too, should spur NASA to stay in the game. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk might or might not be visionaries, but they are easily the most powerful people on this planet to speak with a straight face about colonizing other ones. Mr. Musk warns of an “extinction event” that will require us to leave Earth behind. There is a certain egalitarianism in the idea of an escape hatch for humanity, though it is the egalitarianism of rats leaving a sinking (or overheating) ship. It would have to get pretty bad down here before ordinary people follow the billionaires into the black void of space rather than bid them adieu. Mr. Musk’s product placement of a Tesla in orbit and Mr. Bezos’ postflight performance in his cowboy hat leave one wary of their motives and nostalgic for the military bearing of Glenn. If space travel lost its novelty in the early 1970s, it might now be in the process of losing its dignity. Of course, this takes nothing away from the achievements of Mr. Musk’s aerospace company, SpaceX. Rarely in any industry has such boldness of imagination been matched by such brilliance in execution. The company is an indispensable partner to NASA; a SpaceX landing system will carry astronauts to and from the moon’s surface. Evidence But there is an essential difference between exploration and colonization, and both are a far cry from commercialization. Left to the billionaires, space is less likely to become a haven for humanity than a playground for its wealthiest members. In that event, there will be no more John Glenns — no more astronauts to look up to and emulate, astronauts whose humility and awe in the vastness of space define them as much as their bravery does. Rebuttal “The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not,” Kennedy said in 1962 at Rice University, warning that “no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space.” Perhaps this logic has lost its power; perhaps Americans don’t care if the billionaires and China have the moon to themselves. The idea of space as a new frontier, too, might be tired, overworked. (During the Super Bowl, a Salesforce ad dismissed it with an “Eh.”) But the thrilling discoveries by Perseverance — the evidence of ancient Martian river deltas and lava flows — give eloquent testimony to the mysteries that await on the frontier. Robots like these are stunningly capable. Still, they cannot invent or imagine; they cannot drive the process of discovery in space any more than they do here on Earth. Only humans can lead, and to lead, humans must go. Science “is simply the exploration of the unknown,” James Head, a planetary geologist at Brown who helped train the Apollo astronauts, told me, adding that “the moon is unknown. Mars is unknown.” Perhaps this is what NASA should say, and without apology: We don’t know what we’ll find. We don’t know what the moon and Mars can tell us about the origins of the universe and life on Earth and possibly beyond it. And that, above all, is the reason for going. Six days after his return to Earth, Glenn addressed a joint meeting of Congress. “What benefits are we gaining from the money spent?” he asked, acknowledging that it was too early to say. “But exploration and the pursuit of knowledge,” he said, “have always paid dividends in the long run — usually far greater than anything expected at the outset.” Why bother? This is why. Evidence

nytimes\spotify-joe-rogan-misinformation.txt

Using custom data configuration default-83bee6c9ee7fa303

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-83bee6c9ee7fa303\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-83bee6c9ee7fa303\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

It was the deal that helped make Spotify a podcasting giant, but has now put the company at the center of a fiery debate about misinformation and free speech. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5510944128036499}
Spotify was already the king of music streaming. But to help propel the company into its next phase as an all-purpose audio juggernaut, and further challenge Apple and Google, it wanted a superstar podcaster, much as Howard Stern helped put satellite radio on the map in 2006. Spotify executives came to view Joe Rogan — a comedian and sports commentator whose no-holds-barred podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” was already a monster hit on YouTube — as that transformative star. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9788730144500732}
In May 2020, after an intense courtship, Spotify announced a licensing agreement to host Mr. Rogan’s show exclusively. Although reported then to be worth more than $100 million, the true value of the deal that was negotiated at the time, which covered three and a half years, was at least $200 million, with the possibility of more, according to two people familiar with the details of the transaction who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss it. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9120841026306152}
But in recent weeks the show that helped Spotify catapult into a market leader for podcasts has also placed it at the center of the sort of cultural storm that has long engulfed Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, over questions about the responsibility tech behemoths have for the content on their platforms. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8267017602920532}
It began when several prominent artists, led by Neil Young, took their music off the service to protest what they described as Covid vaccine misinformation on Mr. Rogan’s show. Then clips from old “Joe Rogan Experience” episodes caught fire on social media, showing him using a racial slur repeatedly and chuckling at jokes about sexual exploitation, prompting Mr. Rogan to apologize for his past use of the slur. A #DeleteSpotify social media campaign began calling for a boycott. And some Spotify podcasters publicly criticized Mr. Rogan and the platform. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9933958649635315}
Spotify declined to make company executives available for interviews. Dustee Jenkins, a spokeswoman for the company, declined to comment on the terms of Mr. Rogan’s deal. Representatives of Mr. Rogan did not respond to multiple requests for comment. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9678808450698853}
Even in the frothy podcast market, the deal for “The Joe Rogan Experience” was extraordinary. Spotify had purchased entire content companies, Gimlet Media and The Ringer, for slightly less than $200 million each, according to company filings. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6101880669593811}
With tens of millions of listeners for its buzziest episodes, “The Joe Rogan Experience” is Spotify’s biggest podcast not only in the United States but in 92 other markets, with a following that hangs on every word of his hourslong shows. In its financial reports, Spotify cites podcasts — and Mr. Rogan’s show in particular — as a factor in the long-sought growth of its advertising business. At a recent company meeting, Daniel Ek, Spotify’s chief executive, told employees that exclusive content like Mr. Rogan’s show is vital ammunition in Spotify’s competition against tech Goliaths like Apple and Google. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9858453273773193}
As Mr. Rogan faced growing public criticism, Spotify responded by reaffirming its commitment to free speech, even as dozens of Mr. Rogan’s past episodes have been removed. It also made its content guidelines public for the first time, said that it would add “content advisory” notices to episodes discussing the coronavirus and promised to contribute $100 million for work by creators “from historically marginalized groups.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8014146685600281}
The moves came as Spotify faced growing dissension among high-profile creators. This month Ava DuVernay, the film director who announced a podcast deal with Spotify a year ago but has yet to produce any content under it, severed her ties with Spotify, according to a statement from her production company, Array. And Jemele Hill, the former ESPN commentator, said that Spotify’s defense of Mr. Rogan had created problems with her audience, and raised questions about the sincerity of the company’s dedication to minority talent. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9803670644760132}
“What I would like to see,” Ms. Hill said in an interview, “is for them to hand $100 million to somebody who is Black.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4224838614463806}
For Spotify, the move into podcasting is the culmination of years of strategy to find a business that is more profitable than hosting music, for which it must pay about two-thirds of every dollar to rights holders. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6441704034805298}
The company dipped its toe into video around 2015, but little came of it. By 2018, the year Spotify listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange, it was forming plans to pursue Mr. Rogan, hoping to supercharge its market position in non-music audio and to chip away at the dominance of Apple and Google’s YouTube. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9347530007362366}
To make Spotify a player in podcasting, Mr. Ek and his deputies, including Dawn Ostroff, a former television and magazine publishing executive, and Courtney Holt, formerly of Maker Studios, an online video network, set out on a multipart strategy. Spotify would buy audio studios, like Gimlet, and acquire exclusive rights to existing shows. With Spotify Originals, the company would also create buzzy new programs in partnership with creators like Ms. DuVernay’s Array and Higher Ground, the production company of former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9872968196868896}
Developing a portfolio of podcasts unique to Spotify, as Netflix had built a walled garden for video, was a key aim, according to several employees involved in the strategy discussions. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5506032109260559}
“All music streaming services are offering the same plain vanilla ice cream at the same price,” said Will Page, Spotify’s former top economist, who was not involved in the Rogan deal but is a frequent commentator on the digital media business. “The overarching issue is how do you make your customer proposition distinct.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9431127905845642}
The strategy had seemed to be working for Netflix, which produced its first original show in 2012 as a way to differentiate itself from other streaming services. Barry McCarthy, a former top executive at Netflix, was Spotify’s chief financial officer until early 2020 and is now on its board. (Earlier this month, he was named the chief executive of Peloton.) Ted Sarandos, the co-chief executive officer of Netflix, is also on the board. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9899039268493652}
With podcasts, Spotify could be more in charge of its own destiny, and could pocket more of the advertising and subscription fees it relies on. And with the company’s later acquisitions of start-ups like Megaphone and Whooshkaa, Spotify could provide better tools for both the many podcasters who work with Spotify and the marketers who purchase ads on the platform. This week, Spotify expanded its portfolio of podcast tools by acquiring two more companies, Podsights and Chartable.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9772371053695679}
Ultimately, the goal was to provide a pathway for different kinds of content to make its way onto the platform, as the company made clear when it announced that “audio — not just music — would be the future of Spotify.” {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.6122959852218628}
There was one podcast that executives felt could accelerate Spotify’s growth at the pace the company wanted: “The Joe Rogan Experience.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5380741953849792}
Since the show’s debut in 2009, Mr. Rogan, a mixed martial arts enthusiast and comedian, had made himself into a podcasting heavyweight, landing an eclectic range of guests and engaging them in freewheeling, uncensored conversations. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.49565255641937256}
The results could be wildly entertaining, as when Mr. Rogan smoked marijuana with Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of Tesla, in 2018. Or they could be inflammatory, as when Mr. Rogan hosted the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones — who has spread bogus theories that the 2012 killing of 20 children and six educators at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., was a hoax — despite Mr. Jones being barred from Spotify for violating its prohibition on hate speech two years prior. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9832245111465454}
Mr. Rogan is no standard, one-sided media talking head. He supported Bernie Sanders for president and stumps for universal health care. But he also has some libertarian views and expressed skepticism about vaccines, suggesting that “healthy” young people, for example, do not need to get vaccinated for Covid-19, contrary to what scientists and health officials were urging. The left-leaning watchdog group Media Matters for America has documented more than 20 instances of what it characterizes as Covid-19 misinformation, bigotry and anti-trans language on Mr. Rogan’s show — in 2021 alone. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9405169486999512}
Mr. Rogan’s show was one of the biggest success stories in podcasting, but for years it was not available on Spotify. In May 2020, Spotify wooed him with an offer he couldn’t refuse. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.47619497776031494}
After the deal was made official, Mr. Rogan had a message on his show for fans who might fear more corporate control: “It will be the exact same show. I am not going to be an employee of Spotify.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8288132548332214}
Spotify’s stock price jumped 17 percent the week the deal was announced. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6485952138900757}
For many rank-and-file employees at Spotify, landing Mr. Rogan was far from something to be celebrated. He was already known for elevating controversial figures like Mr. Jones and Gavin McInnes, founder of the alt-right group the Proud Boys. The news that Mr. Rogan would be joining the platform brought with it an initial wave of concern inside the company, according to several current and former employees. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9482346177101135}
That reached a flash point in September 2020, when a number of employees pushed back against episodes of Mr. Rogan’s show that they felt were transphobic. One employee group, Spectrum — made up of L.G.B.T. members or supporters — pressed management over why Spotify had made the deal with Mr. Rogan despite knowing how divisive some of his content could be, according to current and former employees who witnessed the events at the time. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9644815325737}
There had also been concerns within Spotify that the company had not invested enough in moderation tools to review podcasts, an area known as “trust and safety.” The deluge of podcasts each week introduced new risks about harmful content that the company had not previously dealt with as a music service. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.571567714214325}
Mr. Ek defended the company’s decisions at the time, while meeting with many of the concerned employee groups to try to assuage their concerns. Management’s position, however, was clear: Mr. Rogan wasn’t going anywhere. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.26527851819992065}
As the months wore on and Mr. Rogan showed no sign of shying away from controversy, more people connected to the company began to speak out against his presence on the platform. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.475553035736084}
In January, after 270 scientists, medical professionals and others wrote to Spotify to raise alarms about Covid-related misinformation on Mr. Rogan’s show, executives made assurances internally that the company was taking the issue seriously and that it was continuing to review Mr. Rogan’s shows to make sure they were complying with Spotify’s rules, said a person involved in the discussions. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9603087306022644}
The issue exploded on Jan. 24, when Mr. Young, the rock icon, posted a public letter demanding that his music be removed from Spotify over coronavirus misinformation. “They can have Rogan or Young,” he wrote. “Not both.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9118672609329224}
Joni Mitchell followed him off the platform, and within days, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who have their own deal to produce podcasts for Spotify but have produced only one, voiced their own concerns about Covid misinformation on the platform. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8543933033943176}
Amid the backlash, Mr. Rogan promised to add “balance” to the conversations on his show. But days later, the crisis widened when the R&B singer India.Arie posted a video compilation of Mr. Rogan repeatedly using a racial slur, and said she wished to withdraw her music as well. She and other musicians also used the episode to reiterate long-running complaints that the streaming economy does not pay artists enough. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9500001668930054}
As the controversy swirled, many Spotify workers felt management was too slow to respond, two current employees said. It also raised alarms on Spotify’s board of directors, where some members have been disappointed by the company’s halting response, according to a person familiar with the events who asked to remain anonymous because of confidentiality agreements. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.950988233089447}
Management of the crisis in the United States may have been further complicated because Spotify’s headquarters is nearly 4,000 miles away, in Sweden, where Mr. Ek, a publicity-shy executive who grew up in a suburb of Stockholm, and many of the company’s engineers and longest-tenured employees are based.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8797559142112732}
Free expression is a deeply held belief in Sweden. Many employees there — and in the United States — were angry when Spotify removed music by R. Kelly and XXXTentacion from playlists in 2018 for content or conduct deemed offensive, a decision the company quickly reversed. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7144443988800049}
Mr. Ek has made it clear that he is wary of taking on the role of censor. “We’re not in the business of dictating the discourse that these creators want to have on their shows,” he told employees earlier this month in a speech first reported by The Verge, adding that “if we only wanted to make content that we all like and agree with, we will need to eliminate religion, and politics, and comedy, and health, and environment, and education, the list goes on and on and on.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9041160941123962}
And as a business matter, censoring Mr. Rogan could alienate his legion of fans and set a slippery precedent with other podcasters, according to Mark Mulligan, an industry analyst with Midia Research. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5318659543991089}
“That could put at risk their future podcast strategy,” Mr. Mulligan said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4198254942893982}
In a recent memo to employees, Mr. Ek wrote that “canceling voices is a slippery slope” but acknowledged that a number of episodes of Mr. Rogan’s show had been removed from the platform. He wrote that Mr. Rogan had decided to remove them after meetings with Spotify executives and “his own reflections.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8784328103065491}

It was the deal that helped make Spotify a podcasting giant, but has now put the company at the center of a fiery debate about misinformation and free speech. Claim Spotify was already the king of music streaming. But to help propel the company into its next phase as an all-purpose audio juggernaut, and further challenge Apple and Google, it wanted a superstar podcaster, much as Howard Stern helped put satellite radio on the map in 2006. Spotify executives came to view Joe Rogan — a comedian and sports commentator whose no-holds-barred podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” was already a monster hit on YouTube — as that transformative star. In May 2020, after an intense courtship, Spotify announced a licensing agreement to host Mr. Rogan’s show exclusively. Although reported then to be worth more than $100 million, the true value of the deal that was negotiated at the time, which covered three and a half years, was at least $200 million, with the possibility of more, according to two people familiar with the details of the transaction who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss it. Evidence But in recent weeks the show that helped Spotify catapult into a market leader for podcasts has also placed it at the center of the sort of cultural storm that has long engulfed Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, over questions about the responsibility tech behemoths have for the content on their platforms. Rebuttal It began when several prominent artists, led by Neil Young, took their music off the service to protest what they described as Covid vaccine misinformation on Mr. Rogan’s show. Then clips from old “Joe Rogan Experience” episodes caught fire on social media, showing him using a racial slur repeatedly and chuckling at jokes about sexual exploitation, prompting Mr. Rogan to apologize for his past use of the slur. A #DeleteSpotify social media campaign began calling for a boycott. And some Spotify podcasters publicly criticized Mr. Rogan and the platform. Spotify declined to make company executives available for interviews. Dustee Jenkins, a spokeswoman for the company, declined to comment on the terms of Mr. Rogan’s deal. Representatives of Mr. Rogan did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Even in the frothy podcast market, the deal for “The Joe Rogan Experience” was extraordinary. Spotify had purchased entire content companies, Gimlet Media and The Ringer, for slightly less than $200 million each, according to company filings. With tens of millions of listeners for its buzziest episodes, “The Joe Rogan Experience” is Spotify’s biggest podcast not only in the United States but in 92 other markets, with a following that hangs on every word of his hourslong shows. In its financial reports, Spotify cites podcasts — and Mr. Rogan’s show in particular — as a factor in the long-sought growth of its advertising business. At a recent company meeting, Daniel Ek, Spotify’s chief executive, told employees that exclusive content like Mr. Rogan’s show is vital ammunition in Spotify’s competition against tech Goliaths like Apple and Google. As Mr. Rogan faced growing public criticism, Spotify responded by reaffirming its commitment to free speech, even as dozens of Mr. Rogan’s past episodes have been removed. It also made its content guidelines public for the first time, said that it would add “content advisory” notices to episodes discussing the coronavirus and promised to contribute $100 million for work by creators “from historically marginalized groups.” The moves came as Spotify faced growing dissension among high-profile creators. This month Ava DuVernay, the film director who announced a podcast deal with Spotify a year ago but has yet to produce any content under it, severed her ties with Spotify, according to a statement from her production company, Array. And Jemele Hill, the former ESPN commentator, said that Spotify’s defense of Mr. Rogan had created problems with her audience, and raised questions about the sincerity of the company’s dedication to minority talent. “What I would like to see,” Ms. Hill said in an interview, “is for them to hand $100 million to somebody who is Black.” Evidence For Spotify, the move into podcasting is the culmination of years of strategy to find a business that is more profitable than hosting music, for which it must pay about two-thirds of every dollar to rights holders. Claim The company dipped its toe into video around 2015, but little came of it. By 2018, the year Spotify listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange, it was forming plans to pursue Mr. Rogan, hoping to supercharge its market position in non-music audio and to chip away at the dominance of Apple and Google’s YouTube. To make Spotify a player in podcasting, Mr. Ek and his deputies, including Dawn Ostroff, a former television and magazine publishing executive, and Courtney Holt, formerly of Maker Studios, an online video network, set out on a multipart strategy. Spotify would buy audio studios, like Gimlet, and acquire exclusive rights to existing shows. With Spotify Originals, the company would also create buzzy new programs in partnership with creators like Ms. DuVernay’s Array and Higher Ground, the production company of former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama. Evidence Developing a portfolio of podcasts unique to Spotify, as Netflix had built a walled garden for video, was a key aim, according to several employees involved in the strategy discussions. Claim “All music streaming services are offering the same plain vanilla ice cream at the same price,” said Will Page, Spotify’s former top economist, who was not involved in the Rogan deal but is a frequent commentator on the digital media business. “The overarching issue is how do you make your customer proposition distinct.” The strategy had seemed to be working for Netflix, which produced its first original show in 2012 as a way to differentiate itself from other streaming services. Barry McCarthy, a former top executive at Netflix, was Spotify’s chief financial officer until early 2020 and is now on its board. (Earlier this month, he was named the chief executive of Peloton.) Ted Sarandos, the co-chief executive officer of Netflix, is also on the board. With podcasts, Spotify could be more in charge of its own destiny, and could pocket more of the advertising and subscription fees it relies on. And with the company’s later acquisitions of start-ups like Megaphone and Whooshkaa, Spotify could provide better tools for both the many podcasters who work with Spotify and the marketers who purchase ads on the platform. This week, Spotify expanded its portfolio of podcast tools by acquiring two more companies, Podsights and Chartable. Evidence Ultimately, the goal was to provide a pathway for different kinds of content to make its way onto the platform, as the company made clear when it announced that “audio — not just music — would be the future of Spotify.” Concluding Statement There was one podcast that executives felt could accelerate Spotify’s growth at the pace the company wanted: “The Joe Rogan Experience.” Claim Since the show’s debut in 2009, Mr. Rogan, a mixed martial arts enthusiast and comedian, had made himself into a podcasting heavyweight, landing an eclectic range of guests and engaging them in freewheeling, uncensored conversations. The results could be wildly entertaining, as when Mr. Rogan smoked marijuana with Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of Tesla, in 2018. Or they could be inflammatory, as when Mr. Rogan hosted the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones — who has spread bogus theories that the 2012 killing of 20 children and six educators at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., was a hoax — despite Mr. Jones being barred from Spotify for violating its prohibition on hate speech two years prior. Mr. Rogan is no standard, one-sided media talking head. He supported Bernie Sanders for president and stumps for universal health care. But he also has some libertarian views and expressed skepticism about vaccines, suggesting that “healthy” young people, for example, do not need to get vaccinated for Covid-19, contrary to what scientists and health officials were urging. The left-leaning watchdog group Media Matters for America has documented more than 20 instances of what it characterizes as Covid-19 misinformation, bigotry and anti-trans language on Mr. Rogan’s show — in 2021 alone. Evidence Mr. Rogan’s show was one of the biggest success stories in podcasting, but for years it was not available on Spotify. In May 2020, Spotify wooed him with an offer he couldn’t refuse. Lead After the deal was made official, Mr. Rogan had a message on his show for fans who might fear more corporate control: “It will be the exact same show. I am not going to be an employee of Spotify.” Evidence Spotify’s stock price jumped 17 percent the week the deal was announced. Claim For many rank-and-file employees at Spotify, landing Mr. Rogan was far from something to be celebrated. He was already known for elevating controversial figures like Mr. Jones and Gavin McInnes, founder of the alt-right group the Proud Boys. The news that Mr. Rogan would be joining the platform brought with it an initial wave of concern inside the company, according to several current and former employees. That reached a flash point in September 2020, when a number of employees pushed back against episodes of Mr. Rogan’s show that they felt were transphobic. One employee group, Spectrum — made up of L.G.B.T. members or supporters — pressed management over why Spotify had made the deal with Mr. Rogan despite knowing how divisive some of his content could be, according to current and former employees who witnessed the events at the time. There had also been concerns within Spotify that the company had not invested enough in moderation tools to review podcasts, an area known as “trust and safety.” The deluge of podcasts each week introduced new risks about harmful content that the company had not previously dealt with as a music service. Mr. Ek defended the company’s decisions at the time, while meeting with many of the concerned employee groups to try to assuage their concerns. Management’s position, however, was clear: Mr. Rogan wasn’t going anywhere. As the months wore on and Mr. Rogan showed no sign of shying away from controversy, more people connected to the company began to speak out against his presence on the platform. In January, after 270 scientists, medical professionals and others wrote to Spotify to raise alarms about Covid-related misinformation on Mr. Rogan’s show, executives made assurances internally that the company was taking the issue seriously and that it was continuing to review Mr. Rogan’s shows to make sure they were complying with Spotify’s rules, said a person involved in the discussions. The issue exploded on Jan. 24, when Mr. Young, the rock icon, posted a public letter demanding that his music be removed from Spotify over coronavirus misinformation. “They can have Rogan or Young,” he wrote. “Not both.” Joni Mitchell followed him off the platform, and within days, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who have their own deal to produce podcasts for Spotify but have produced only one, voiced their own concerns about Covid misinformation on the platform. Amid the backlash, Mr. Rogan promised to add “balance” to the conversations on his show. But days later, the crisis widened when the R&B singer India.Arie posted a video compilation of Mr. Rogan repeatedly using a racial slur, and said she wished to withdraw her music as well. She and other musicians also used the episode to reiterate long-running complaints that the streaming economy does not pay artists enough. As the controversy swirled, many Spotify workers felt management was too slow to respond, two current employees said. It also raised alarms on Spotify’s board of directors, where some members have been disappointed by the company’s halting response, according to a person familiar with the events who asked to remain anonymous because of confidentiality agreements. Management of the crisis in the United States may have been further complicated because Spotify’s headquarters is nearly 4,000 miles away, in Sweden, where Mr. Ek, a publicity-shy executive who grew up in a suburb of Stockholm, and many of the company’s engineers and longest-tenured employees are based. Free expression is a deeply held belief in Sweden. Many employees there — and in the United States — were angry when Spotify removed music by R. Kelly and XXXTentacion from playlists in 2018 for content or conduct deemed offensive, a decision the company quickly reversed. Mr. Ek has made it clear that he is wary of taking on the role of censor. “We’re not in the business of dictating the discourse that these creators want to have on their shows,” he told employees earlier this month in a speech first reported by The Verge, adding that “if we only wanted to make content that we all like and agree with, we will need to eliminate religion, and politics, and comedy, and health, and environment, and education, the list goes on and on and on.” Evidence And as a business matter, censoring Mr. Rogan could alienate his legion of fans and set a slippery precedent with other podcasters, according to Mark Mulligan, an industry analyst with Midia Research. Claim “That could put at risk their future podcast strategy,” Mr. Mulligan said. In a recent memo to employees, Mr. Ek wrote that “canceling voices is a slippery slope” but acknowledged that a number of episodes of Mr. Rogan’s show had been removed from the platform. He wrote that Mr. Rogan had decided to remove them after meetings with Spotify executives and “his own reflections.” Evidence

nytimes\stanytsia-lushankya-shelling.txt

Using custom data configuration default-0a8794a9c63f3ccc

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-0a8794a9c63f3ccc\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-0a8794a9c63f3ccc\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

STANYTSIA LUHANSKA, Ukraine — The fighting between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian government forces has been flaring for eight years. Daily skirmishes, mostly low-level, had become routine. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7323105931282043}
But an outbreak of hostilities on Thursday, coming at a particularly perilous moment in the tense standoff between Russia and the West, brought the fear of a larger conflict close to home for this dusty remote town not far from the Russian border. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8266247510910034}
The Ukrainian military said shells fired by Russian-backed separatists in the morning hit a kindergarten, wounding three teachers but no students, as well as the playground of a high school. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8614795207977295}
“It was a whistling sound, then an explosion,” said Tatyana Podikay, the director of the school, called Fairytale Kindergarten. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6431253552436829}
The teachers herded the students into a hallway with no windows, the building’s safest place, and waited for parents to pick them up, she said. “To create a calm psychological atmosphere the teachers told stories, and whoever needed it got a hug,” Ms. Podikay said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9718595743179321}
The military also said two soldiers and a woman at a bus station were wounded. There were no reported fatalities. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7562658786773682}
In the evening, the sharp cracks of explosions echoed off buildings and flashes of light from incoming artillery shells silhouetted the trees. Out on the darkened streets, explosions echoed among the buildings. At least two volleys of a half dozen rounds each struck the town, arriving with a sharp hiss before exploding. Drivers stopped their cars, got out and listened worriedly. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8106346726417542}
One shell hit a residential building on Magistralna Street, bursting a gas pipe and starting a fire. The authorities said later in the evening that nobody had died or been wounded. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9583551287651062}
Each side blamed the other for the shelling, which was viewed with concern in Ukraine and in Western capitals for its potential to spiral into a bigger conflict. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5425155162811279}
Analysts said the nature of the shelling, which hit multiple sites along the contact line all in a single day, was unusual compared with recent months. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.46221429109573364}
“Today it was long-distance and synchronized shelling,” said Maria Zolkina, a Ukrainian political analyst who works at the Democratic Initiatives Foundation. “It was simultaneous. This is notable.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7941274642944336}
The United States has said that Russia has massed about 150,000 troops on Ukraine’s border. And Western military analysts have predicted that Russia may claim an unprovoked attack, perhaps manufactured by Moscow, to justify an intervention in eastern Ukraine, possibly under the claim of serving as a peacekeeping force. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9663374423980713}
The artillery strikes began early Thursday and continued into the evening, when the sharp cracks of explosions echoed off buildings and flashes of light from incoming artillery shells silhouetted trees on the edge of town. The Ukrainian military reported 47 cease-fire violations in at least 25 different locations, including two towns, Stanytsia Luhanska and Popasna. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.988448441028595}
After a lull in the afternoon, artillery fire resumed Thursday evening in Stanytsia Luhanska, a hardscrabble town of dusty, potholed roads surrounded by farm fields. There is a gas station, a few leafy residential streets and not much else. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9611111879348755}
Shells exploded in or near the town in at least two volleys of a half dozen rounds each. Drivers stopped their cars, got out and listened, worriedly. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9412214756011963}
Amid the fighting, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine flew to the front line to visit troops and was quoted in Ukrainian media saying he was proud of the army for “giving a worthy rebuff to the enemy.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7907764315605164}
In Brussels, the U.S. defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, said that the reports of shelling were “troubling.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5450969338417053}
While the United States was still gathering details, Mr. Austin said: “We’ve said for some time that the Russians might do something like this in order to justify a military conflict. So we’ll be watching this very closely.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5678083896636963}
That sequence of events has played out before with Russia. In 2008, the Russian Army invaded Georgia after a flare-up in fighting between government troops and a Russian-backed separatist movement in South Ossetia, a region of Georgia that Moscow now recognizes as an independent state. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9490882754325867}
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, blamed Russia for a “severe violation” of the tenuous cease-fire agreement in the region, while President Zelensky described it as “provocative shelling.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7533907294273376}
The Kremlin was taking a different line. “We have warned many times that excessive concentration of Ukrainian forces near the contact line, together with possible provocations, can pose terrible danger,” President Vladimir V. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said. He added that he hoped Western countries would warn Kyiv against a “further escalation of tensions.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9290598630905151}
The Russian-backed separatists also blamed the Ukrainian Army. Leonid Pasechnik, head of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic, said the Ukrainian Army had shelled civilians early this morning — a claim that could not be independently verified. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9095242619514465}
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, has said about a quarter of the inhabitants in the separatist regions — 750,000 out of about three million — are Russian citizens. A strike that wounds or kills a Russian citizen could elevate the risk of a Russian response. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9417173266410828}
To highlight what it called reckless firing into civilian areas, the Ukrainian military flew reporters, including one from The New York Times, to the site of the damaged kindergarten. The strike also knocked out electricity and sent residents scrambling into basements to seek cover. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9624167084693909}
Artillery and small-arms fire are common along the frontline, where an international monitoring group typically reports dozens to hundreds of cease-fire violations every day in recent years. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7084479928016663}
Homes, schools, administrative buildings and infrastructure including electrical pylons are often damaged. Earlier this year, Ukrainian authorities reported that a drone strike hit an abandoned school in an eastern Ukrainian town. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9577028155326843}

STANYTSIA LUHANSKA, Ukraine — The fighting between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian government forces has been flaring for eight years. Daily skirmishes, mostly low-level, had become routine. Evidence But an outbreak of hostilities on Thursday, coming at a particularly perilous moment in the tense standoff between Russia and the West, brought the fear of a larger conflict close to home for this dusty remote town not far from the Russian border. Rebuttal The Ukrainian military said shells fired by Russian-backed separatists in the morning hit a kindergarten, wounding three teachers but no students, as well as the playground of a high school. “It was a whistling sound, then an explosion,” said Tatyana Podikay, the director of the school, called Fairytale Kindergarten. The teachers herded the students into a hallway with no windows, the building’s safest place, and waited for parents to pick them up, she said. “To create a calm psychological atmosphere the teachers told stories, and whoever needed it got a hug,” Ms. Podikay said. The military also said two soldiers and a woman at a bus station were wounded. There were no reported fatalities. In the evening, the sharp cracks of explosions echoed off buildings and flashes of light from incoming artillery shells silhouetted the trees. Out on the darkened streets, explosions echoed among the buildings. At least two volleys of a half dozen rounds each struck the town, arriving with a sharp hiss before exploding. Drivers stopped their cars, got out and listened worriedly. One shell hit a residential building on Magistralna Street, bursting a gas pipe and starting a fire. The authorities said later in the evening that nobody had died or been wounded. Each side blamed the other for the shelling, which was viewed with concern in Ukraine and in Western capitals for its potential to spiral into a bigger conflict. Evidence Analysts said the nature of the shelling, which hit multiple sites along the contact line all in a single day, was unusual compared with recent months. Counterclaim “Today it was long-distance and synchronized shelling,” said Maria Zolkina, a Ukrainian political analyst who works at the Democratic Initiatives Foundation. “It was simultaneous. This is notable.” The United States has said that Russia has massed about 150,000 troops on Ukraine’s border. And Western military analysts have predicted that Russia may claim an unprovoked attack, perhaps manufactured by Moscow, to justify an intervention in eastern Ukraine, possibly under the claim of serving as a peacekeeping force. The artillery strikes began early Thursday and continued into the evening, when the sharp cracks of explosions echoed off buildings and flashes of light from incoming artillery shells silhouetted trees on the edge of town. The Ukrainian military reported 47 cease-fire violations in at least 25 different locations, including two towns, Stanytsia Luhanska and Popasna. After a lull in the afternoon, artillery fire resumed Thursday evening in Stanytsia Luhanska, a hardscrabble town of dusty, potholed roads surrounded by farm fields. There is a gas station, a few leafy residential streets and not much else. Shells exploded in or near the town in at least two volleys of a half dozen rounds each. Drivers stopped their cars, got out and listened, worriedly. Amid the fighting, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine flew to the front line to visit troops and was quoted in Ukrainian media saying he was proud of the army for “giving a worthy rebuff to the enemy.” In Brussels, the U.S. defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, said that the reports of shelling were “troubling.” While the United States was still gathering details, Mr. Austin said: “We’ve said for some time that the Russians might do something like this in order to justify a military conflict. So we’ll be watching this very closely.” That sequence of events has played out before with Russia. In 2008, the Russian Army invaded Georgia after a flare-up in fighting between government troops and a Russian-backed separatist movement in South Ossetia, a region of Georgia that Moscow now recognizes as an independent state. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, blamed Russia for a “severe violation” of the tenuous cease-fire agreement in the region, while President Zelensky described it as “provocative shelling.” The Kremlin was taking a different line. “We have warned many times that excessive concentration of Ukrainian forces near the contact line, together with possible provocations, can pose terrible danger,” President Vladimir V. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said. He added that he hoped Western countries would warn Kyiv against a “further escalation of tensions.” The Russian-backed separatists also blamed the Ukrainian Army. Leonid Pasechnik, head of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic, said the Ukrainian Army had shelled civilians early this morning — a claim that could not be independently verified. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, has said about a quarter of the inhabitants in the separatist regions — 750,000 out of about three million — are Russian citizens. A strike that wounds or kills a Russian citizen could elevate the risk of a Russian response. To highlight what it called reckless firing into civilian areas, the Ukrainian military flew reporters, including one from The New York Times, to the site of the damaged kindergarten. The strike also knocked out electricity and sent residents scrambling into basements to seek cover. Artillery and small-arms fire are common along the frontline, where an international monitoring group typically reports dozens to hundreds of cease-fire violations every day in recent years. Homes, schools, administrative buildings and infrastructure including electrical pylons are often damaged. Earlier this year, Ukrainian authorities reported that a drone strike hit an abandoned school in an eastern Ukrainian town. Evidence

nytimes\state-of-the-union-painting-with-john.txt

Using custom data configuration default-4b66a75eae560387

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-4b66a75eae560387\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-4b66a75eae560387\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

‘State of the Union’When to watch: Now, on SundanceNow and AMC+. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5206417441368103}
The new season of this short-form bickering dramedy, written by Nick Hornby and directed by Stephen Frears, stars Brendan Gleeson and Patricia Clarkson as a couple on the brink of divorce. Each episode takes place in the 10 minutes before their marriage counseling sessions, and it’s easy to see how locked into old habits they are; she’s still wearing a pink “pussy hat,” and he sputters unfrozen caveman transphobia. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7008010745048523}
“Union” feels like a play — specifically that beginning part of the play, when you quietly panic and begin an awkward prayer of desperation. “I hope this gets good soon; I hope I lock into whatever is happening; if this doesn’t start feeling more real, I am in for a terrible night.” {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.6345002055168152}
But then it does, and the rush of relief is worth twice the price of admission. “Union” shines at its meanest, and it moves through a surprising range of dynamics in each brief installment. Your best bet is to watch all 10 in a row, appetizers-for-dinner, “Mermaids”-style. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.9009435772895813}
‘Painting With John’When to watch: Friday at 11 p.m., on HBO. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3965608477592468}
The musician, actor and artist John Lurie returns for a second season of delivering sanguine, meandering philosophy lectures while painting. Think of this show as the opposite of listening to podcasts at 1.5 speed; it has a magical lack of urgency and focus but still results in enlightenment. Lurie muses about his own experiences, about nature, about praise. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9363687038421631}
In the fourth episode, he gazes into the camera and croaks, “adahbahdeewah.” After a moment, he says he hopes the people writing the closed captioning capture his terminology accurately. “Adahbahdeewah means absurd, but in an optimistic way,” he explains, “like, ‘“Painting With John” is adahbahdeewah.’” Exactly. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9754236340522766}
‘One Mississippi’When to watch: Now, on Hulu and Amazon. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6276160478591919}
Tig Notaro co-created and stars in this loosely autobiographical comedy, which ran from 2015 to 2017, about a comedian who comes home to Mississippi after her mother’s death and winds up staying longer than she planned. Even though the show deals with sad and heavy topics, “Mississippi” is easy to like and easy to love, insightful in ways that are calming rather than jarring. If you’re into “Somebody Somewhere,” or if you’re dazzled by Sheryl Lee Ralph in “Abbott Elementary” (her character in this series arrives in Season 2 and is amazing), or if you’re just dreaming of spring, watch this. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.919981062412262}

‘State of the Union’When to watch: Now, on SundanceNow and AMC+. Claim The new season of this short-form bickering dramedy, written by Nick Hornby and directed by Stephen Frears, stars Brendan Gleeson and Patricia Clarkson as a couple on the brink of divorce. Each episode takes place in the 10 minutes before their marriage counseling sessions, and it’s easy to see how locked into old habits they are; she’s still wearing a pink “pussy hat,” and he sputters unfrozen caveman transphobia. Evidence “Union” feels like a play — specifically that beginning part of the play, when you quietly panic and begin an awkward prayer of desperation. “I hope this gets good soon; I hope I lock into whatever is happening; if this doesn’t start feeling more real, I am in for a terrible night.” Concluding Statement But then it does, and the rush of relief is worth twice the price of admission. “Union” shines at its meanest, and it moves through a surprising range of dynamics in each brief installment. Your best bet is to watch all 10 in a row, appetizers-for-dinner, “Mermaids”-style. Rebuttal ‘Painting With John’When to watch: Friday at 11 p.m., on HBO. The musician, actor and artist John Lurie returns for a second season of delivering sanguine, meandering philosophy lectures while painting. Think of this show as the opposite of listening to podcasts at 1.5 speed; it has a magical lack of urgency and focus but still results in enlightenment. Lurie muses about his own experiences, about nature, about praise. In the fourth episode, he gazes into the camera and croaks, “adahbahdeewah.” After a moment, he says he hopes the people writing the closed captioning capture his terminology accurately. “Adahbahdeewah means absurd, but in an optimistic way,” he explains, “like, ‘“Painting With John” is adahbahdeewah.’” Exactly. Evidence ‘One Mississippi’When to watch: Now, on Hulu and Amazon. Claim Tig Notaro co-created and stars in this loosely autobiographical comedy, which ran from 2015 to 2017, about a comedian who comes home to Mississippi after her mother’s death and winds up staying longer than she planned. Even though the show deals with sad and heavy topics, “Mississippi” is easy to like and easy to love, insightful in ways that are calming rather than jarring. If you’re into “Somebody Somewhere,” or if you’re dazzled by Sheryl Lee Ralph in “Abbott Elementary” (her character in this series arrives in Season 2 and is amazing), or if you’re just dreaming of spring, watch this. Evidence

nytimes\stonehenge-british-museum.txt

Using custom data configuration default-9d98760cdb1b3504

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-9d98760cdb1b3504\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-9d98760cdb1b3504\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

LONDON — In 2003, the Canadian gynecologist Anthony M. Perks came up with an anatomical explanation for Stonehenge, the prehistoric monument in England whose precise purpose is a mystery. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5909973978996277}
“Stonehenge could represent, symbolically, the opening by which Earth Mother gave birth to the plants and animals on which the ancient people so depended,” he wrote in an essay published in a medical journal. It could depict, he suggested, “the human vulva, with the birth canal at its center.” The essay was illustrated with sketches of Stonehenge and of female genitalia. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9567909240722656}
The vulva hypothesis is one of the myriad theories that have proliferated around Stonehenge, which was constructed some 4,500 years ago. While it was built at roughly the same time as the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid of Giza, we know far more about those Egyptian sites. Incomplete knowledge of Stonehenge has turned it into a riddle that is now part of its identity. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7767353057861328}
Some believe it to be an astronomical calculator, an observatory that helped demarcate the seasons. Others view Stonehenge as a place of healing, a kind of prehistoric Lourdes, which hosted hordes of pilgrims. In the 1960s and ’70s, the site was thought to be imbued with magical and mystical powers, and it became a hot spot for hippies and open-air festivals. Today, it’s a focal point of New Age counterculture and environmental activism. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.5810753107070923}
Stonehenge also attracts plenty of alien-origin theories, prompted by the belief that human beings could not possibly have raised those structures by themselves. According to these theories, Stonehenge was built by extraterrestrials, and it’s actually a landing pad for spacecraft. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6843915581703186}
As the archaeologist and writer Jacquetta Hawkes famously observed in 1967, “Every age has the Stonehenge it deserves — or desires.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.542548656463623}
Hawkes’s words are reproduced on a wall text inside a new exhibition at the British Museum, “The World of Stonehenge,” which runs through July 17. The show strives to lessen the mystery around the monument by focusing on recent discoveries and putting them in the context of life in Britain, Ireland and northwestern Europe before, during and after Stonehenge’s construction. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6320211291313171}
“Stonehenge was an important place that people went to, to be together as a community,” said Neil Wilkin, the exhibition’s lead curator. He described the site as a mix between a town hall and a cathedral, where people mingled for both religious and social reasons. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8354262709617615}
“We want to pan back from it, and look at the world that it existed within,” he added. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5097947716712952}
The exhibition starts out by introducing visitors to a structure that preceded Stonehenge: a stone circle built on the same spot some 500 years earlier, which, according to archaeologists, was a cemetery. It was constructed with large bluestone pillars — each of them transported from Wales, more than 200 miles away — and used for burying cremated bodies. So far, the remains of 150 to 200 men, women, and children have been found there. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9708797931671143}
A piece of bluestone most likely used in the building of that cemetery is on display at the British Museum, as are some contents of the 5,000-year-old graves, including bone pins used for fastening shrouds. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8679130673408508}
Five centuries later, Stonehenge as we know it was built using some of those existing bluestones, as well as more than 80 towering “sarsen” stones, the monument’s vertical pillars, and horizontal lintels, or capping stones. The sarsen stones were pounded into shape by circular hammerstones, several examples of which were recently discovered and are on show in an exhibition vitrine. Each sarsen stone needed at least 1,000 people to transport it over a distance of 15 miles. The process took generations, and many were killed and maimed as a result, according to the exhibition wall text. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9884538054466248}
Another recent discovery revealed that some of the pilgrims who helped build Stonehenge stayed at Durrington Walls, a nearby settlement which, at its peak, contained around 1,000 temporary houses. A display case in the exhibition — piled high with pig bones and pieces of flint and pottery — attests to the hustle and bustle of that settlement. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9415794014930725}
People were coming there, perhaps seasonally, to work on the final stages of Stonehenge, and they were “feasting: roasting pig, having barbecues,” said Jennifer Wexler, another exhibition curator. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8829341530799866}
Stonehenge was built at a time of drastic population decline and dispersal, said Mike Parker Pearson, a professor at University College London who has made major Stonehenge-related discoveries, including the Durrington Walls settlement. There were few, if any, villages, and society was “trying to create a sense of unity and collaboration among its members,” he explained. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8761575818061829}
Built on the site of an ancient cemetery, Stonehenge was a “monument of remembrance,” he said, and an “expression of unity” that pulled people together in the pursuit of a common endeavor. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5112858414649963}
Yet, he said, “People don’t want it to be that simple as an explanation.” {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.5471855401992798}
“I was once told by a government minister that it was a great shame, what we were doing, because, of course, we were chipping away at the mystery” and “that does terrible things to the visitor numbers,” Parker Pearson added. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5801323056221008}
Much of that mystery comes down to the fact that writing did not exist in England until the Romans arrived 2,500 years later — so there is no written history of Stonehenge and the people who put it up, Parker Pearson said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4926876425743103}
Nor did the people of prehistoric England leave any representations of human figures, said Wilkin, the curator. They had “an almost secretive attitude towards their religion,” perhaps with the intention of “excluding others from it,” so their spiritual practices are undocumented as well. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8536550402641296}
Technology may soon help solve some of the mysteries. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8423179984092712}
Analysis of stable isotopes — meaning atoms that have additional or missing neutrons — is being used to study bones, tooth enamel and food residues on pots and elsewhere to determine what a person of the time ate and how far they moved around. Tooth enamel contains a kind of chemical record of the climatic and geological conditions in which a person grew up, allowing archaeologists to work out how far people traveled from their birthplaces and to map out migration and mobility, Wilkin explained. It also gives insight into their diets. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9921202659606934}
The study of aDNA, or ancient DNA, is also pinpointing genetic relationships between individuals. Two people buried together with similar-looking ceramic objects might now be identified as brother and sister, with those grave goods taking on extra significance as they start to denote family relationships. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9270306825637817}
“That’s going to really change the knowledge of the people who built monuments like Stonehenge, and what we can say about them,” Wilkin said, adding that it could lead to revising the label of the Stonehenge period from prehistory to “protohistory” — or just to plain history. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5686406493186951}
New technology could “change how we interpret the objects in a really important way,” Wilkin said. “Exhibitions like this in 10 or 20 years will be very, very different.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5298082232475281}

LONDON — In 2003, the Canadian gynecologist Anthony M. Perks came up with an anatomical explanation for Stonehenge, the prehistoric monument in England whose precise purpose is a mystery. “Stonehenge could represent, symbolically, the opening by which Earth Mother gave birth to the plants and animals on which the ancient people so depended,” he wrote in an essay published in a medical journal. It could depict, he suggested, “the human vulva, with the birth canal at its center.” The essay was illustrated with sketches of Stonehenge and of female genitalia. The vulva hypothesis is one of the myriad theories that have proliferated around Stonehenge, which was constructed some 4,500 years ago. While it was built at roughly the same time as the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid of Giza, we know far more about those Egyptian sites. Incomplete knowledge of Stonehenge has turned it into a riddle that is now part of its identity. Evidence Some believe it to be an astronomical calculator, an observatory that helped demarcate the seasons. Others view Stonehenge as a place of healing, a kind of prehistoric Lourdes, which hosted hordes of pilgrims. In the 1960s and ’70s, the site was thought to be imbued with magical and mystical powers, and it became a hot spot for hippies and open-air festivals. Today, it’s a focal point of New Age counterculture and environmental activism. Lead Stonehenge also attracts plenty of alien-origin theories, prompted by the belief that human beings could not possibly have raised those structures by themselves. According to these theories, Stonehenge was built by extraterrestrials, and it’s actually a landing pad for spacecraft. As the archaeologist and writer Jacquetta Hawkes famously observed in 1967, “Every age has the Stonehenge it deserves — or desires.” Hawkes’s words are reproduced on a wall text inside a new exhibition at the British Museum, “The World of Stonehenge,” which runs through July 17. The show strives to lessen the mystery around the monument by focusing on recent discoveries and putting them in the context of life in Britain, Ireland and northwestern Europe before, during and after Stonehenge’s construction. “Stonehenge was an important place that people went to, to be together as a community,” said Neil Wilkin, the exhibition’s lead curator. He described the site as a mix between a town hall and a cathedral, where people mingled for both religious and social reasons. Evidence “We want to pan back from it, and look at the world that it existed within,” he added. Claim The exhibition starts out by introducing visitors to a structure that preceded Stonehenge: a stone circle built on the same spot some 500 years earlier, which, according to archaeologists, was a cemetery. It was constructed with large bluestone pillars — each of them transported from Wales, more than 200 miles away — and used for burying cremated bodies. So far, the remains of 150 to 200 men, women, and children have been found there. A piece of bluestone most likely used in the building of that cemetery is on display at the British Museum, as are some contents of the 5,000-year-old graves, including bone pins used for fastening shrouds. Five centuries later, Stonehenge as we know it was built using some of those existing bluestones, as well as more than 80 towering “sarsen” stones, the monument’s vertical pillars, and horizontal lintels, or capping stones. The sarsen stones were pounded into shape by circular hammerstones, several examples of which were recently discovered and are on show in an exhibition vitrine. Each sarsen stone needed at least 1,000 people to transport it over a distance of 15 miles. The process took generations, and many were killed and maimed as a result, according to the exhibition wall text. Another recent discovery revealed that some of the pilgrims who helped build Stonehenge stayed at Durrington Walls, a nearby settlement which, at its peak, contained around 1,000 temporary houses. A display case in the exhibition — piled high with pig bones and pieces of flint and pottery — attests to the hustle and bustle of that settlement. People were coming there, perhaps seasonally, to work on the final stages of Stonehenge, and they were “feasting: roasting pig, having barbecues,” said Jennifer Wexler, another exhibition curator. Stonehenge was built at a time of drastic population decline and dispersal, said Mike Parker Pearson, a professor at University College London who has made major Stonehenge-related discoveries, including the Durrington Walls settlement. There were few, if any, villages, and society was “trying to create a sense of unity and collaboration among its members,” he explained. Evidence Built on the site of an ancient cemetery, Stonehenge was a “monument of remembrance,” he said, and an “expression of unity” that pulled people together in the pursuit of a common endeavor. Claim Yet, he said, “People don’t want it to be that simple as an explanation.” Counterclaim “I was once told by a government minister that it was a great shame, what we were doing, because, of course, we were chipping away at the mystery” and “that does terrible things to the visitor numbers,” Parker Pearson added. Much of that mystery comes down to the fact that writing did not exist in England until the Romans arrived 2,500 years later — so there is no written history of Stonehenge and the people who put it up, Parker Pearson said. Nor did the people of prehistoric England leave any representations of human figures, said Wilkin, the curator. They had “an almost secretive attitude towards their religion,” perhaps with the intention of “excluding others from it,” so their spiritual practices are undocumented as well. Evidence Technology may soon help solve some of the mysteries. Claim Analysis of stable isotopes — meaning atoms that have additional or missing neutrons — is being used to study bones, tooth enamel and food residues on pots and elsewhere to determine what a person of the time ate and how far they moved around. Tooth enamel contains a kind of chemical record of the climatic and geological conditions in which a person grew up, allowing archaeologists to work out how far people traveled from their birthplaces and to map out migration and mobility, Wilkin explained. It also gives insight into their diets. The study of aDNA, or ancient DNA, is also pinpointing genetic relationships between individuals. Two people buried together with similar-looking ceramic objects might now be identified as brother and sister, with those grave goods taking on extra significance as they start to denote family relationships. “That’s going to really change the knowledge of the people who built monuments like Stonehenge, and what we can say about them,” Wilkin said, adding that it could lead to revising the label of the Stonehenge period from prehistory to “protohistory” — or just to plain history. New technology could “change how we interpret the objects in a really important way,” Wilkin said. “Exhibitions like this in 10 or 20 years will be very, very different.” Evidence

nytimes\submarine-spy-guilty-plea.txt

Using custom data configuration default-bb829cdf10532be8

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-bb829cdf10532be8\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-bb829cdf10532be8\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. — The wife of a Navy nuclear engineer pleaded guilty on Friday to taking part in a conspiracy to sell submarine secrets to a foreign country, bringing to a close an espionage case that mixed spycraft and politics with the travails of a suburban family. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.822802722454071}
Four days after her husband, Jonathan Toebbe, pleaded guilty in the case under a deal with the government, Diana Toebbe, a high school teacher in Annapolis, Md., acknowledged her part in a scheme to sell nuclear reactor secrets her husband had taken from the Navy, and will face a sentence of not more than three years, according to the terms of her agreement with the government. Her plea was entered during a hearing at a federal courthouse in Martinsburg. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9838000535964966}
In April 2020, the couple wrote to an undisclosed foreign government, which turned over the letter to the F.B.I. Investigators then set up a series of dead drops to ensnare Ms. Toebbe and Mr. Toebbe; he faces 12 to 17-and-a-half years in prison under the terms of his plea. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9464632868766785}
In the court proceeding Friday, prosecutors outlined how Ms. Toebbe served as a lookout while her husband deposited information in a dead drop set up by the F.B.I. Ms. Toebbe said she “knowingly and voluntarily joined a conspiracy with my husband, Jonathan Toebbe,” to attempt to sell government secrets to a foreign nation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9428411722183228}
Ms. Toebbe appeared in court with short, graying hair that was neatly parted and wearing an orange prison uniform. She kept a white surgical mask on throughout the hearing. Chained at the wrist and ankles, Ms. Toebbe sat very still throughout the proceeding, responding sharply to questions from the magistrate judge. Her voice grew softer as she read her statement admitting how she had aided her husband. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.7863008975982666}
While U.S. Attorney Jarod J. Douglas read the terms of her plea deal, Ms. Toebbe appeared to close her eyes or look down for an extended period of time, prompting her lawyer to tap her shoulder. She nodded to him in response. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6314414143562317}
Neither Ms. Toebbe’s husband nor her children were present at the hearing, and it did not appear that any family members were there to hear the guilty plea. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5814416408538818}
The couple’s plea deals will spare the government from a trial that could have risked exposing the foreign country involved in the plot — which officials have worked hard to keep secret. It might also have risked making public some of the material that the couple intended to provide to the foreign government. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.896291196346283}
Mr. Toebbe worked in the Washington Navy Yard, developing nuclear reactors for American submarines. While he had access to some of the nation’s most highly protected secrets, the exact nature of the material he tried to sell in exchange for a kind of cryptocurrency has not been revealed by the government. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8542894124984741}
Former students and colleagues at Annapolis’s elite Key School described Ms. Toebbe as increasingly frustrated with American politics and former President Donald J. Trump. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4979470372200012}
She also complained about her pay at the school. Her husband made a good government salary as a highly educated nuclear engineer, $153,737 a year. Ms. Toebbe had even stronger academic credentials, holding a Ph.D. from Emory University, but she earned less than some of her male colleagues, a source of friction she would express in front of her classes, according to former students. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9919413328170776}
And, people briefed on the investigation said, they thought the couple’s motivation was financial. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6299384236335754}
Under the terms of her plea agreement, Ms. Toebbe could face large fines and restitution to the government, although the government should not be able to take her house from her. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.46664512157440186}
In an earlier court hearing over her detention, the government read from encrypted text messages between the couple that prosecutors said showed Ms. Toebbe’s alienation from the United States. The defense countered that Ms. Toebbe’s frustration with Mr. Trump was hardly treasonous and was in fact something many Americans shared. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9389722347259521}
The Toebbes have two school-aged children, who until the arrest of their parents, attended the school where their mother taught. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5245109796524048}
Some of the text messages revealed in court and discussions with people briefed on the case portrayed Ms. Toebbe as either an equal partner in the conspiracy or the person driving the plot forward. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5343626141548157}
But in Friday’s court hearing, Ms. Toebbe only acknowledged participating in the plan to try and sell secrets in the summer of 2021, when her husband was arranging with an undercover F.B.I. agent to deposit material in various dead drop sites. Prosecutors had video evidence of Ms. Toebbe serving as a lookout as Mr. Toebbe placed a memory card inside a peanut butter sandwich and left it for the undercover agent. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.672029435634613}
From the beginning of court proceeding, Mr. Toebbe positioned himself to take as much of the responsibility as he could — presumably an attempt to reduce the prison time his wife would serve. In jailhouse phone calls taped by the government, Mr. Toebbe told relatives his wife was innocent. And in his plea deal, Mr. Toebbe said it was he who wrote the letter to the foreign country and interacted with the undercover F.B.I. officer. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9592112898826599}
While he implicated her in the conspiracy, all he admitted was that she served as a lookout, what some outside observers said was the bare minimum, given that the F.B.I. had video of the couple at the dead drops they set up. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.3940390646457672}
In the government’s view, since Mr. Toebbe held the security clearance and stole the material from the Navy, it was he who was the more guilty party. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.42879143357276917}
While all the proceedings in the case, including Friday’s, have been overseen by Magistrate Judge Robert W. Trumble, the final sentencing of Ms. Toebbe will be conducted by Gina M. Groh, the district’s chief judge. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5865271091461182}

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. — The wife of a Navy nuclear engineer pleaded guilty on Friday to taking part in a conspiracy to sell submarine secrets to a foreign country, bringing to a close an espionage case that mixed spycraft and politics with the travails of a suburban family. Four days after her husband, Jonathan Toebbe, pleaded guilty in the case under a deal with the government, Diana Toebbe, a high school teacher in Annapolis, Md., acknowledged her part in a scheme to sell nuclear reactor secrets her husband had taken from the Navy, and will face a sentence of not more than three years, according to the terms of her agreement with the government. Her plea was entered during a hearing at a federal courthouse in Martinsburg. In April 2020, the couple wrote to an undisclosed foreign government, which turned over the letter to the F.B.I. Investigators then set up a series of dead drops to ensnare Ms. Toebbe and Mr. Toebbe; he faces 12 to 17-and-a-half years in prison under the terms of his plea. In the court proceeding Friday, prosecutors outlined how Ms. Toebbe served as a lookout while her husband deposited information in a dead drop set up by the F.B.I. Ms. Toebbe said she “knowingly and voluntarily joined a conspiracy with my husband, Jonathan Toebbe,” to attempt to sell government secrets to a foreign nation. Evidence Ms. Toebbe appeared in court with short, graying hair that was neatly parted and wearing an orange prison uniform. She kept a white surgical mask on throughout the hearing. Chained at the wrist and ankles, Ms. Toebbe sat very still throughout the proceeding, responding sharply to questions from the magistrate judge. Her voice grew softer as she read her statement admitting how she had aided her husband. Lead While U.S. Attorney Jarod J. Douglas read the terms of her plea deal, Ms. Toebbe appeared to close her eyes or look down for an extended period of time, prompting her lawyer to tap her shoulder. She nodded to him in response. Neither Ms. Toebbe’s husband nor her children were present at the hearing, and it did not appear that any family members were there to hear the guilty plea. The couple’s plea deals will spare the government from a trial that could have risked exposing the foreign country involved in the plot — which officials have worked hard to keep secret. It might also have risked making public some of the material that the couple intended to provide to the foreign government. Mr. Toebbe worked in the Washington Navy Yard, developing nuclear reactors for American submarines. While he had access to some of the nation’s most highly protected secrets, the exact nature of the material he tried to sell in exchange for a kind of cryptocurrency has not been revealed by the government. Former students and colleagues at Annapolis’s elite Key School described Ms. Toebbe as increasingly frustrated with American politics and former President Donald J. Trump. She also complained about her pay at the school. Her husband made a good government salary as a highly educated nuclear engineer, $153,737 a year. Ms. Toebbe had even stronger academic credentials, holding a Ph.D. from Emory University, but she earned less than some of her male colleagues, a source of friction she would express in front of her classes, according to former students. Evidence And, people briefed on the investigation said, they thought the couple’s motivation was financial. Claim Under the terms of her plea agreement, Ms. Toebbe could face large fines and restitution to the government, although the government should not be able to take her house from her. In an earlier court hearing over her detention, the government read from encrypted text messages between the couple that prosecutors said showed Ms. Toebbe’s alienation from the United States. The defense countered that Ms. Toebbe’s frustration with Mr. Trump was hardly treasonous and was in fact something many Americans shared. Evidence The Toebbes have two school-aged children, who until the arrest of their parents, attended the school where their mother taught. Claim Some of the text messages revealed in court and discussions with people briefed on the case portrayed Ms. Toebbe as either an equal partner in the conspiracy or the person driving the plot forward. Evidence But in Friday’s court hearing, Ms. Toebbe only acknowledged participating in the plan to try and sell secrets in the summer of 2021, when her husband was arranging with an undercover F.B.I. agent to deposit material in various dead drop sites. Prosecutors had video evidence of Ms. Toebbe serving as a lookout as Mr. Toebbe placed a memory card inside a peanut butter sandwich and left it for the undercover agent. Rebuttal From the beginning of court proceeding, Mr. Toebbe positioned himself to take as much of the responsibility as he could — presumably an attempt to reduce the prison time his wife would serve. In jailhouse phone calls taped by the government, Mr. Toebbe told relatives his wife was innocent. And in his plea deal, Mr. Toebbe said it was he who wrote the letter to the foreign country and interacted with the undercover F.B.I. officer. Evidence While he implicated her in the conspiracy, all he admitted was that she served as a lookout, what some outside observers said was the bare minimum, given that the F.B.I. had video of the couple at the dead drops they set up. Counterclaim In the government’s view, since Mr. Toebbe held the security clearance and stole the material from the Navy, it was he who was the more guilty party. Claim While all the proceedings in the case, including Friday’s, have been overseen by Magistrate Judge Robert W. Trumble, the final sentencing of Ms. Toebbe will be conducted by Gina M. Groh, the district’s chief judge. Evidence

nytimes\supreme-court-remain-in-mexico-asylum.txt

Using custom data configuration default-583bb4bee1630496

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-583bb4bee1630496\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-583bb4bee1630496\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether the Biden administration can end a Trump-era immigration program that forces asylum seekers arriving at the southwestern border to await approval in Mexico. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.46058404445648193}
The court put the case on a fast track, scheduling arguments for April. A decision will probably arrive by the end of the court’s current term in late June or early July. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5905482172966003}
The challenged program, known commonly as Remain in Mexico and formally as the Migrant Protection Protocols, applies to people who left a third country and traveled through Mexico to reach the U.S. border. After the policy was put in place at the beginning of 2019, tens of thousands of people waited in unsanitary tent encampments for immigration hearings. There have been widespread reports of sexual assault, kidnapping and torture. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9780720472335815}
Soon after he took office, President Biden sought to end the program. Texas and Missouri sued, saying they had been injured by the termination by having to provide government services like drivers’ licenses to immigrants allowed into the United States. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6113806962966919}
Last August, Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, in Amarillo, ruled that a federal law required returning noncitizens seeking asylum to Mexico whenever the government lacked the resources to detain them. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5632844567298889}
The Biden administration promptly asked the Supreme Court to intervene, but it refused to block Judge Kacsmaryk’s ruling, which required it to restart the program. The three more liberal justices dissented. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.744734525680542}
The court’s brief unsigned order at the time said that the administration had appeared to have acted arbitrarily and capriciously in rescinding the program, citing a 2020 decision that had refused to let the Trump administration immediately rescind an Obama-era program protecting the young immigrants known as Dreamers. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6915544271469116}
The Biden administration then took steps to restart the program and issued a new decision seeking to end it. Administration officials, responding to criticism that they had acted hastily, released a 38-page memorandum setting out their reasoning. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6084305047988892}
They concluded that the program’s costs outweighed its benefits. Among those costs, the memo said, were the dangerous conditions in Mexico, the difficulty immigrants faced in conferring with lawyers across the border and the ways in which the program undermined the administration’s foreign-policy objectives and domestic-policy initiatives. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.9167968034744263}
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, rejected the administration’s plan to shut down the program. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3861966133117676}
“The government says it has unreviewable and unilateral discretion to create and to eliminate entire components of the federal bureaucracy that affect countless people, tax dollars and sovereign states,” Judge Andrew S. Oldham wrote for the panel. “The government also says it has unreviewable and unilateral discretion to ignore statutory limits imposed by Congress.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9371163249015808}
“And the government says it can do all of this by typing up a new ‘memo’ and posting it on the internet,” he added. “If the government were correct, it would supplant the rule of law with the rule of say-so. We hold the government is wrong.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8636293411254883}
Elizabeth B. Prelogar, the solicitor general, told the justices that the appeals court’s decision amounted to unwarranted interference with the president’s power over foreign affairs. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.41058894991874695}
“The injunction is compelling the executive branch to maintain a controversial policy that” officials have “determined is contrary to the interests of the United States; to divert resources from other critical priorities; and to engage in ongoing coordination with Mexico,” she wrote. “That continuing intrusion on the executive’s constitutional and statutory authority to manage the border and conduct the nation’s foreign policy warrants immediate review.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6769484281539917}
Lawyers for Texas and Missouri told the justices that the program was an effective tool to protect the nation’s borders and that the administration had not followed lawful procedures in its attempt to rescind it. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4697357714176178}

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether the Biden administration can end a Trump-era immigration program that forces asylum seekers arriving at the southwestern border to await approval in Mexico. The court put the case on a fast track, scheduling arguments for April. A decision will probably arrive by the end of the court’s current term in late June or early July. The challenged program, known commonly as Remain in Mexico and formally as the Migrant Protection Protocols, applies to people who left a third country and traveled through Mexico to reach the U.S. border. After the policy was put in place at the beginning of 2019, tens of thousands of people waited in unsanitary tent encampments for immigration hearings. There have been widespread reports of sexual assault, kidnapping and torture. Soon after he took office, President Biden sought to end the program. Texas and Missouri sued, saying they had been injured by the termination by having to provide government services like drivers’ licenses to immigrants allowed into the United States. Last August, Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, in Amarillo, ruled that a federal law required returning noncitizens seeking asylum to Mexico whenever the government lacked the resources to detain them. The Biden administration promptly asked the Supreme Court to intervene, but it refused to block Judge Kacsmaryk’s ruling, which required it to restart the program. The three more liberal justices dissented. The court’s brief unsigned order at the time said that the administration had appeared to have acted arbitrarily and capriciously in rescinding the program, citing a 2020 decision that had refused to let the Trump administration immediately rescind an Obama-era program protecting the young immigrants known as Dreamers. The Biden administration then took steps to restart the program and issued a new decision seeking to end it. Administration officials, responding to criticism that they had acted hastily, released a 38-page memorandum setting out their reasoning. Evidence They concluded that the program’s costs outweighed its benefits. Among those costs, the memo said, were the dangerous conditions in Mexico, the difficulty immigrants faced in conferring with lawyers across the border and the ways in which the program undermined the administration’s foreign-policy objectives and domestic-policy initiatives. Concluding Statement A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, rejected the administration’s plan to shut down the program. Claim “The government says it has unreviewable and unilateral discretion to create and to eliminate entire components of the federal bureaucracy that affect countless people, tax dollars and sovereign states,” Judge Andrew S. Oldham wrote for the panel. “The government also says it has unreviewable and unilateral discretion to ignore statutory limits imposed by Congress.” “And the government says it can do all of this by typing up a new ‘memo’ and posting it on the internet,” he added. “If the government were correct, it would supplant the rule of law with the rule of say-so. We hold the government is wrong.” Evidence Elizabeth B. Prelogar, the solicitor general, told the justices that the appeals court’s decision amounted to unwarranted interference with the president’s power over foreign affairs. Claim “The injunction is compelling the executive branch to maintain a controversial policy that” officials have “determined is contrary to the interests of the United States; to divert resources from other critical priorities; and to engage in ongoing coordination with Mexico,” she wrote. “That continuing intrusion on the executive’s constitutional and statutory authority to manage the border and conduct the nation’s foreign policy warrants immediate review.” Lawyers for Texas and Missouri told the justices that the program was an effective tool to protect the nation’s borders and that the administration had not followed lawful procedures in its attempt to rescind it. Evidence

nytimes\susan-collins-eca-reform.txt

Using custom data configuration default-afd2c0c40a1fd751

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-afd2c0c40a1fd751\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-afd2c0c40a1fd751\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Imagine my surprise when on Jan. 6, 2017, I found out that I had received one electoral vote to be vice president of the United States — an office for which I was not a candidate — from a “faithless elector” from the state of Washington. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.924419641494751}
Four years later, on Jan. 6, 2021, when a violent mob overran the Capitol, I realized that my unearned vote in the Electoral College was not amusing. This seemingly innocuous vote was an indication that our system of counting and certifying votes for president and vice president had deep and serious structural problems. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6501854658126831}
These unfortunate flaws are codified in the Electoral Count Act, which guides the implementation of part of the presidential election process included in the Constitution. This 1887 law, vaguely written in the inaccessible language of a different era, was intended to restrain Congress, but in practice it has had the unintended effect of creating ambiguities that could potentially be used to expand the role of Congress and the vice president in ways that are contrary to the Constitution. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8308296799659729}
Despite its defects, the law was not an issue for more than a century because of the restraint of the people who exercised the serious, but limited, constitutional responsibility of counting the votes. Vice presidents and Congresses sustained the will of the people — even when they did not like the result. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.782975435256958}
For example, we saw this in 1961 and again in 2001, when Vice Presidents Richard Nixon and Al Gore presided in a fair and dignified manner over the counting of the electoral votes despite having lost close elections for president. Vice President Gore even refused to hear Democratic objectors who were trying to make him president. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9929895401000977}
Then came the election of 2020. President Donald Trump and his allies both exploited the weaknesses of the law and ignored the language of the Constitution. Mr. Trump argued that the vice president could overturn the election results. A violent mob temporarily halted the electoral count that would confirm President Biden’s victory. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9727678298950195}
Vice President Mike Pence’s courage and integrity on that day cannot be overstated. He stood up to a determined president who relentlessly pressured him to swing the election his way. And he refused to be intimidated by rioters who assaulted police officers, swarmed the Capitol and chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” As the dangerous mob neared the Senate chambers, the vice president and senators had to be whisked away. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8192659020423889}
The House, too, was forced to evacuate, bringing the electoral count to a halt. How well I remember a sparse group of Capitol Police officers urging us to “Run! Run!” as we made our way to a secure location, while other members of the overwhelmed Capitol Police battled the mob. For hours, we watched on television as rioters broke into the Senate chamber and rummaged through our desks. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9831371903419495}
Finally, senators were told it was safe enough for us to proceed back to the chamber, which all of us were determined to do so that we could resume the counting of the votes. The walk back that evening was very different. In contrast to the small number of police officers guiding our evacuation, F.B.I. tactical teams with riot gear, National Guard members and police officers lined our route. Vice President Pence and the Congress returned to the Capitol that night and completed the final, constitutionally mandated step before the inauguration of a new president — we counted the votes. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9221567511558533}
That day reminded us that there is nothing more essential to the survival of a democracy than the orderly transfer of power, and there is nothing more essential to the orderly transfer of power than clear rules for effecting it. We should not depend on the fidelity and resolve of vice presidents to follow the intent of these rules; the law should be crystal clear on the parameters of the vice president’s powers and consistent with the very limited role set forth in the Constitution. Vice President Pence’s actions on Jan. 6 were heroic. But the peaceful transfer of power shouldn’t require heroes. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5088856816291809}
Much debate has focused recently on the casting of ballots. Much more attention must be paid to the counting and certifying of votes. Our democracy depends on it. To prevent the subversion of the electoral process, Congress must reform the Electoral Count Act. A bipartisan group of 16 senators is working to do that. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.6884617805480957}
The ambiguously phrased Electoral Count Act must be amended to make absolutely clear that a vice president cannot manipulate or ignore electoral votes as he or she presides over this joint session of Congress. But other flaws in the law must also be remedied. For instance, the law’s threshold for triggering a challenge to the results of a state is far too low: Only one representative and one senator are required to object to a state’s electors. In the past, members on both sides of the aisle have challenged the vote without any real evidence of wrongdoing. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9778919219970703}
Our group of senators shares a vision of drafting legislation to ensure the integrity of our elections and public confidence in the results. We want a bill that will be considered by committees, debated on the Senate floor, garner the support of the Senate’s two leaders and pass the Senate with 60 or more votes. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8869930505752563}
The broader we cast our net, however, the more difficult it will be to achieve consensus. We have to be careful about expanding a reform bill to include provisions that go well beyond correcting the current law, strengthening election security and protecting poll workers from threats of violence. Relitigating bills that have already been rejected won’t get us to the finish line. Our primary focus must be on avoiding another Jan. 6 by reforming the Electoral Count Act. That is the vital goal in itself, it is our duty to get it done, and it is a worthy mission that should not be derailed by good-faith but ultimately partisan provisions. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.8236067891120911}
We do not know if we will succeed, but we are trying to fix a serious problem.  The senators working on this legislation have philosophical, regional and political differences. When we disagree, we attempt to persuade one another — we cajole, haggle and even argue — but we do so with an eye on a common goal. That is the way it is supposed to work in a democracy. Maybe we could refer to the process as “legitimate political discourse.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7818785309791565}

Imagine my surprise when on Jan. 6, 2017, I found out that I had received one electoral vote to be vice president of the United States — an office for which I was not a candidate — from a “faithless elector” from the state of Washington. Lead Four years later, on Jan. 6, 2021, when a violent mob overran the Capitol, I realized that my unearned vote in the Electoral College was not amusing. This seemingly innocuous vote was an indication that our system of counting and certifying votes for president and vice president had deep and serious structural problems. Evidence These unfortunate flaws are codified in the Electoral Count Act, which guides the implementation of part of the presidential election process included in the Constitution. This 1887 law, vaguely written in the inaccessible language of a different era, was intended to restrain Congress, but in practice it has had the unintended effect of creating ambiguities that could potentially be used to expand the role of Congress and the vice president in ways that are contrary to the Constitution. Despite its defects, the law was not an issue for more than a century because of the restraint of the people who exercised the serious, but limited, constitutional responsibility of counting the votes. Vice presidents and Congresses sustained the will of the people — even when they did not like the result. Rebuttal For example, we saw this in 1961 and again in 2001, when Vice Presidents Richard Nixon and Al Gore presided in a fair and dignified manner over the counting of the electoral votes despite having lost close elections for president. Vice President Gore even refused to hear Democratic objectors who were trying to make him president. Then came the election of 2020. President Donald Trump and his allies both exploited the weaknesses of the law and ignored the language of the Constitution. Mr. Trump argued that the vice president could overturn the election results. A violent mob temporarily halted the electoral count that would confirm President Biden’s victory. Vice President Mike Pence’s courage and integrity on that day cannot be overstated. He stood up to a determined president who relentlessly pressured him to swing the election his way. And he refused to be intimidated by rioters who assaulted police officers, swarmed the Capitol and chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” As the dangerous mob neared the Senate chambers, the vice president and senators had to be whisked away. The House, too, was forced to evacuate, bringing the electoral count to a halt. How well I remember a sparse group of Capitol Police officers urging us to “Run! Run!” as we made our way to a secure location, while other members of the overwhelmed Capitol Police battled the mob. For hours, we watched on television as rioters broke into the Senate chamber and rummaged through our desks. Finally, senators were told it was safe enough for us to proceed back to the chamber, which all of us were determined to do so that we could resume the counting of the votes. The walk back that evening was very different. In contrast to the small number of police officers guiding our evacuation, F.B.I. tactical teams with riot gear, National Guard members and police officers lined our route. Vice President Pence and the Congress returned to the Capitol that night and completed the final, constitutionally mandated step before the inauguration of a new president — we counted the votes. That day reminded us that there is nothing more essential to the survival of a democracy than the orderly transfer of power, and there is nothing more essential to the orderly transfer of power than clear rules for effecting it. We should not depend on the fidelity and resolve of vice presidents to follow the intent of these rules; the law should be crystal clear on the parameters of the vice president’s powers and consistent with the very limited role set forth in the Constitution. Vice President Pence’s actions on Jan. 6 were heroic. But the peaceful transfer of power shouldn’t require heroes. Evidence Much debate has focused recently on the casting of ballots. Much more attention must be paid to the counting and certifying of votes. Our democracy depends on it. To prevent the subversion of the electoral process, Congress must reform the Electoral Count Act. A bipartisan group of 16 senators is working to do that. Lead The ambiguously phrased Electoral Count Act must be amended to make absolutely clear that a vice president cannot manipulate or ignore electoral votes as he or she presides over this joint session of Congress. But other flaws in the law must also be remedied. For instance, the law’s threshold for triggering a challenge to the results of a state is far too low: Only one representative and one senator are required to object to a state’s electors. In the past, members on both sides of the aisle have challenged the vote without any real evidence of wrongdoing. Our group of senators shares a vision of drafting legislation to ensure the integrity of our elections and public confidence in the results. We want a bill that will be considered by committees, debated on the Senate floor, garner the support of the Senate’s two leaders and pass the Senate with 60 or more votes. Evidence The broader we cast our net, however, the more difficult it will be to achieve consensus. We have to be careful about expanding a reform bill to include provisions that go well beyond correcting the current law, strengthening election security and protecting poll workers from threats of violence. Relitigating bills that have already been rejected won’t get us to the finish line. Our primary focus must be on avoiding another Jan. 6 by reforming the Electoral Count Act. That is the vital goal in itself, it is our duty to get it done, and it is a worthy mission that should not be derailed by good-faith but ultimately partisan provisions. Concluding Statement We do not know if we will succeed, but we are trying to fix a serious problem.  The senators working on this legislation have philosophical, regional and political differences. When we disagree, we attempt to persuade one another — we cajole, haggle and even argue — but we do so with an eye on a common goal. That is the way it is supposed to work in a democracy. Maybe we could refer to the process as “legitimate political discourse.” Evidence

nytimes\sway-kara-swisher-keith-rabois.txt

Using custom data configuration default-f7b4f2d692eb27a9

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-f7b4f2d692eb27a9\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-f7b4f2d692eb27a9\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Keith Rabois minted his wealth with Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and other members of the so-called “PayPal Mafia.” Now, though, he’s moved to Miami and become one of the city’s biggest hype men. He believes Florida — which has already seen an influx of tech bros, venture capital investments and cryptocurrency plays during the pandemic — offers a better home to tech than California can, largely because of the politics. He tells Kara Swisher: “The mayor of Miami, the governor of Florida treat citizens like customers. ‘What can we offer you? How can we help?’ That’s their goal, and that’s how they frame everything.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9701170325279236}
[You can listen to this episode of “Sway” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.] {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6282841563224792}
In this conversation, Kara presses Rabois whether tech’s doubling down on Florida is all just about escaping high taxes. They also discuss whether venture capital is what investment banking was in the 2000s. And they catch up on the news, from stock fall-offs in big tech to why Peter Thiel will be stepping down from Meta’s board. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.921262264251709}
(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.610438346862793}

Keith Rabois minted his wealth with Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and other members of the so-called “PayPal Mafia.” Now, though, he’s moved to Miami and become one of the city’s biggest hype men. He believes Florida — which has already seen an influx of tech bros, venture capital investments and cryptocurrency plays during the pandemic — offers a better home to tech than California can, largely because of the politics. He tells Kara Swisher: “The mayor of Miami, the governor of Florida treat citizens like customers. ‘What can we offer you? How can we help?’ That’s their goal, and that’s how they frame everything.” [You can listen to this episode of “Sway” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.] In this conversation, Kara presses Rabois whether tech’s doubling down on Florida is all just about escaping high taxes. They also discuss whether venture capital is what investment banking was in the 2000s. And they catch up on the news, from stock fall-offs in big tech to why Peter Thiel will be stepping down from Meta’s board. (A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.) Evidence

nytimes\taxes-remote-work.txt

Using custom data configuration default-4302a88353f721e3

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-4302a88353f721e3\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-4302a88353f721e3\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Congratulations, road warrior. Last year you did business in five states in a week — emails from airports, phone calls from taxis, videoconferences from hotel rooms, business meals here and there. Later, when you took vacation in yet another state, you flipped open your laptop now and then to check in with colleagues. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.47699978947639465}
Now the bad news: Depending on which states you went to, you may have to file tax returns in all six of them, even if your work there took mere minutes. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.5643422603607178}
Ridiculous, right? That’s what the law says, though. According to the Tax Foundation, there are 24 states that require people who did work in their states to file tax returns no matter how short a time they worked or how little income they earned. (Examples are Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania.) In another five states, including California, there’s also no time minimum, although there is an income threshold below which you don’t have to file a return. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.696427047252655}
Most states don’t pursue short-time visitors for nickels and dimes because it’s not worth the effort. You’re unlikely to get a threatening letter from Nebraska because of that work phone call you made when you attended that wedding in Omaha. As written, though, the state laws “make scofflaws of us all,” says Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects at the Tax Foundation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9833303093910217}
It’s actually worse than that. Some people, such as lawyers and accountants, can’t take the risk of getting caught bending the rules, so they have to file returns in every state where they worked, which for many can be a dozen or more. It’s also a paperwork burden for employers that try to play by the rules, because the states require them to withhold state taxes from paychecks. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5205777287483215}
It’s understandable that states would try to tax professional athletes, pop stars and other high earners who work in their states even briefly, because lots of money is involved. But laws that target everyone are just kind of silly. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.590574324131012}
Congress could fix the problem by saying that you don’t owe income tax in a state unless you work there at least 30 days in a year. That would strike a reasonable balance between the competing priorities of completeness and simplicity, says Andrew Moylan, executive vice president of the National Taxpayers Union Foundation. Illinois and West Virginia have already set 30-day work minimums. Arizona, Hawaii and Utah have gone even further with 60-day minimums. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9736862778663635}
There’s legislation in Congress to require a 30-day work minimum for most people, excluding professional athletes and other “public figures.” It passed the House in 2012, 2016 and 2017. It’s co-sponsored in the Senate this session by John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, and Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, who don’t agree on much. But Senator Charles Schumer of New York, the majority leader, has consistently opposed the legislation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9761124849319458}
New York State makes considerable money by taxing out-of-staters who come to the state — especially New York City — for business. New York’s Division of Taxation and Finance “has aggressively enforced the law and gotten more aggressive over time,” says Maureen Riehl, executive director of the Mobile Workforce Coalition. She told me that state employees go to trade shows in the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan and take pictures of the booths so they can go after companies that send their employees to New York. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9938626289367676}
“We’ve been told by companies that they’ve avoided doing events in New York because of this,” says Ken Pokalsky, a vice president of the Business Council of New York State. “I’m not saying it’s widespread, but it’s one more thing.” He said his organization favors a 30-day work minimum for state taxation. The state tax agency did not reply to my voice mail requests for a response. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.987484872341156}
(Complicating matters, there’s a related problem called the convenience rule that’s on the books in five states, including New York. Those states claim the right to tax people if the company they work for is headquartered in the state. So workers can be taxed on the same dollar of income by their home state and the state of their company headquarters.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5817972421646118}
State laws that require tax filings even for incidental work have become a bigger problem since the pandemic began, because more people are working remotely. But sponsors in the House and Senate aren’t pushing the bill this session because they don’t think it has a chance given the opposition from two key New Yorkers: Schumer and Representative Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, through which the House bill must pass. “As long as they sit where they sit, this issue’s on pause,” Riehl said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.953832745552063}
Angelo Roefaro, Schumer’s press secretary, told me today that Schumer and Nadler aren’t the only ones questioning the legislation. He said talks are continuing with other members of Congress as well as governors and state legislators. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8110547065734863}
For the time being, nothing is happening. As Walczak of the Tax Foundation wrote to me in an email: “Taxpayers shouldn’t be tasked with deciding when to ignore what is technically a tax filing obligation and when to comply with it. Tax laws should be enforceable and broadly enforced. If they can’t be reasonably enforced, or it would be undesirable to do so, then it’s worth revisiting that law.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6795445084571838}
I recently saw your newsletter on the University of the People, the university that charges no tuition. The opportunity to attend college without paying for classes could be a life-changer for many students. But the faculty members aren’t paid. At a moment when current Ph.D. students graduate into a crushing job market, if we promote educational models that further erode that job market, it will become impossible for most students to afford to pursue graduate education and become professors — in turn undermining the quality of education we can provide as a nation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5529140830039978}
Bruce LenthallRosemont, Pa. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7779013514518738}
The writer is the executive director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Pennsylvania. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.342191219329834}
“All day long, I’d biddy biddy bum/If I were a wealthy man.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4057925343513489}
— Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, “If I Were a Rich Man,” from “Fiddler on the Roof” (1964) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5056449770927429}

Congratulations, road warrior. Last year you did business in five states in a week — emails from airports, phone calls from taxis, videoconferences from hotel rooms, business meals here and there. Later, when you took vacation in yet another state, you flipped open your laptop now and then to check in with colleagues. Evidence Now the bad news: Depending on which states you went to, you may have to file tax returns in all six of them, even if your work there took mere minutes. Counterclaim Ridiculous, right? That’s what the law says, though. According to the Tax Foundation, there are 24 states that require people who did work in their states to file tax returns no matter how short a time they worked or how little income they earned. (Examples are Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania.) In another five states, including California, there’s also no time minimum, although there is an income threshold below which you don’t have to file a return. Most states don’t pursue short-time visitors for nickels and dimes because it’s not worth the effort. You’re unlikely to get a threatening letter from Nebraska because of that work phone call you made when you attended that wedding in Omaha. As written, though, the state laws “make scofflaws of us all,” says Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects at the Tax Foundation. It’s actually worse than that. Some people, such as lawyers and accountants, can’t take the risk of getting caught bending the rules, so they have to file returns in every state where they worked, which for many can be a dozen or more. It’s also a paperwork burden for employers that try to play by the rules, because the states require them to withhold state taxes from paychecks. It’s understandable that states would try to tax professional athletes, pop stars and other high earners who work in their states even briefly, because lots of money is involved. But laws that target everyone are just kind of silly. Congress could fix the problem by saying that you don’t owe income tax in a state unless you work there at least 30 days in a year. That would strike a reasonable balance between the competing priorities of completeness and simplicity, says Andrew Moylan, executive vice president of the National Taxpayers Union Foundation. Illinois and West Virginia have already set 30-day work minimums. Arizona, Hawaii and Utah have gone even further with 60-day minimums. There’s legislation in Congress to require a 30-day work minimum for most people, excluding professional athletes and other “public figures.” It passed the House in 2012, 2016 and 2017. It’s co-sponsored in the Senate this session by John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, and Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, who don’t agree on much. But Senator Charles Schumer of New York, the majority leader, has consistently opposed the legislation. New York State makes considerable money by taxing out-of-staters who come to the state — especially New York City — for business. New York’s Division of Taxation and Finance “has aggressively enforced the law and gotten more aggressive over time,” says Maureen Riehl, executive director of the Mobile Workforce Coalition. She told me that state employees go to trade shows in the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan and take pictures of the booths so they can go after companies that send their employees to New York. “We’ve been told by companies that they’ve avoided doing events in New York because of this,” says Ken Pokalsky, a vice president of the Business Council of New York State. “I’m not saying it’s widespread, but it’s one more thing.” He said his organization favors a 30-day work minimum for state taxation. The state tax agency did not reply to my voice mail requests for a response. (Complicating matters, there’s a related problem called the convenience rule that’s on the books in five states, including New York. Those states claim the right to tax people if the company they work for is headquartered in the state. So workers can be taxed on the same dollar of income by their home state and the state of their company headquarters.) State laws that require tax filings even for incidental work have become a bigger problem since the pandemic began, because more people are working remotely. But sponsors in the House and Senate aren’t pushing the bill this session because they don’t think it has a chance given the opposition from two key New Yorkers: Schumer and Representative Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, through which the House bill must pass. “As long as they sit where they sit, this issue’s on pause,” Riehl said. Angelo Roefaro, Schumer’s press secretary, told me today that Schumer and Nadler aren’t the only ones questioning the legislation. He said talks are continuing with other members of Congress as well as governors and state legislators. For the time being, nothing is happening. As Walczak of the Tax Foundation wrote to me in an email: “Taxpayers shouldn’t be tasked with deciding when to ignore what is technically a tax filing obligation and when to comply with it. Tax laws should be enforceable and broadly enforced. If they can’t be reasonably enforced, or it would be undesirable to do so, then it’s worth revisiting that law.” I recently saw your newsletter on the University of the People, the university that charges no tuition. The opportunity to attend college without paying for classes could be a life-changer for many students. But the faculty members aren’t paid. At a moment when current Ph.D. students graduate into a crushing job market, if we promote educational models that further erode that job market, it will become impossible for most students to afford to pursue graduate education and become professors — in turn undermining the quality of education we can provide as a nation. Evidence Bruce LenthallRosemont, Pa. The writer is the executive director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Pennsylvania. Claim “All day long, I’d biddy biddy bum/If I were a wealthy man.” — Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, “If I Were a Rich Man,” from “Fiddler on the Roof” (1964) Evidence

nytimes\tech-predictions.txt

Using custom data configuration default-32ced1e23b237714

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-32ced1e23b237714\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-32ced1e23b237714\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. Here is a collection of past columns. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.7628713846206665}
Happy New Year! (I can still say that on Jan. 4, right?) {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.36659517884254456}
To kick off 2022, I asked smart people to confess: What have you been wrong about related to technology, and why? Reflecting back on misjudgments can help us all more effectively look ahead. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.44097813963890076}
This exercise was inspired by Bret Taylor, the co-chief executive of the software company Salesforce, who posed a similar question on Twitter months ago. Taylor said that he had been wrong about how quickly driverless cars would become commonplace. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8316340446472168}
Among my mea culpas was believing that Apple would soon become a fading tech empire. Ha, nope. (I’ll dig more into this in tomorrow’s newsletter.) Here’s a selection of responses, which have been edited. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.32660508155822754}
Tech cannot fix problems caused by car dependence: {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.9885520935058594}
For a long time, I was excited about technologies related to transportation, including apps that made it easier for people to take an Uber to a train station or a scooter ride the last mile to work from a bus stop. I thought that they would help cities liberate themselves from a reliance on cars. I was wrong. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.44736188650131226}
America’s cities are so reliant on cars not because we lack tech options or alternatives. It’s because we have policies that subsidize automobiles. There is free parking, zoning that separates people’s homes from work and shopping, and a lack of investment in public transit, walking and cycling to make alternatives to car trips more appealing. These are policy failures. Technology can be helpful, but often it’s extra credit when we haven’t passed the basic test. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8192088603973389}
— David Zipper, a visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School who researches cities, technology, and how people and goods move around {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5523916482925415}
Technology improved people’s lives and incomes, but the gains were uneven: {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8205388188362122}
Pretty much everything that makes our lives better, healthier and more secure comes from new technology. But since at least the Industrial Revolution, new technology also displaces people economically. What I and many other economists didn’t fully grasp was how many jobs would be lost to technology automation and how quickly that would happen. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7562457323074341}
Tech also helped create new jobs, and wages have increased, but much of the gains went to high-end knowledge workers. There are good jobs out there, but we’re just not good at getting people to that work and training them for it. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7736176252365112}
— Allison Schrager, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research center {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5687635540962219}
Educational records are still scattered all over the place: {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8158379197120667}
It’s now much easier, though far from perfect, to gain access to my health records online because of policy and technological changes over the last decade. I assumed that electronic educational records would come swiftly after that. They haven’t. Workers, parents and companies still have no simple way to retrieve records from education and job training. It hurts us and the economy. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6687764525413513}
Job seekers and military veterans don’t always remember all their certifications and training that could help them get better work and higher pay. Workers and parents have to do so much work to get school transcripts and other records that are often still kept on paper. Companies spend a lot of time verifying people’s credentials, degrees and licenses. The government should have centralized databases from accredited colleges and universities. It should be easy. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9215445518493652}
— Julia Pollak, a labor economist with the career website ZipRecruiter {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6778349280357361}
Facebook didn’t learn from its grave harms: {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.9323437213897705}
I was wrong that playing a role in enabling genocide would be sufficient cause for a major tech company to make meaningful changes. {'label': 'Position', 'score': 0.3538285493850708}
— Anil Dash, chief executive of the programming company Glitch, a veteran technology entrepreneur and a frequent critic of Facebook. (Dash first wrote this as a response to Taylor’s tweet, and he told me that it’s still the biggest thing he has been wrong about in technology.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8979222774505615}
We’re still clinging to hopes for driverless cars: {'label': 'Position', 'score': 0.46362584829330444}
People claimed that we would have self-driving cars on every road by 2020. When 2020 came and went, I thought self-driving car enthusiasts would give up on the dream. I thought people would realize that autonomous vehicles don’t work in snow or bad weather. I thought that people would realize that the computer vision algorithms in self-driving cars don’t detect people of color well, that they’re as racist as the algorithms in soap dispensers or facial recognition systems. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6807136535644531}
I hoped that a public conversation about racial bias in algorithms would lead to companies’ making better decisions about rolling out tech that has obvious racial, gender or ability bias. I was wrong. I would like to be less wrong about this in 2022. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.44360971450805664}
— Meredith Broussard, an artificial intelligence researcher and associate professor in data journalism at New York University {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5242986679077148}
If there’s a lesson from these varied responses, it may be that we have a tendency to both overestimate and underestimate the amount of change that technology can spark in the world. Humility about technology feels like a useful mode for 2022. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4204203188419342}
Guilty verdicts for Elizabeth Holmes: A jury found the founder of the failed blood testing start-up Theranos guilty on four charges related to defrauding investors, my colleagues Erin Griffith and Erin Woo write. Holmes is expected to appeal. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9369850754737854}
Related: Erin Griffith writes that technologists tried to distance themselves from Theranos, but that the company and Holmes relied on the Silicon Valley start-up playbook of overly optimistic puffery, denigrating doubters and stoking a “fear of missing out.” Also read David Streitfeld on the indictment of the “fake it until you make it” culture. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9651514291763306}
Calculating the threats of political violence: An investigation by ProPublica and The Washington Post found at least 650,000 posts in public Facebook groups that questioned the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election victory, including false information and violent threats, in the months before the Capitol riot one year ago. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9261817932128906}
A personal word game that became a big hit: A software engineer in Brooklyn, Josh Wardle, created an online word game called Wordle just for his partner. It took off. “It’s just a game that’s fun,” Wardle told my colleague Daniel Victor. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8243095278739929}
Spend 20 seconds taking in the sheep and the beautiful hills of Yorkshire. (Thanks to the Daily Respite newsletter for sharing this.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9268779754638672}
We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.39380958676338196}
If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. You can also read past On Tech columns. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.4619752764701843}

This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. Here is a collection of past columns. Happy New Year! (I can still say that on Jan. 4, right?) Lead To kick off 2022, I asked smart people to confess: What have you been wrong about related to technology, and why? Reflecting back on misjudgments can help us all more effectively look ahead. Claim This exercise was inspired by Bret Taylor, the co-chief executive of the software company Salesforce, who posed a similar question on Twitter months ago. Taylor said that he had been wrong about how quickly driverless cars would become commonplace. Among my mea culpas was believing that Apple would soon become a fading tech empire. Ha, nope. (I’ll dig more into this in tomorrow’s newsletter.) Here’s a selection of responses, which have been edited. Evidence Tech cannot fix problems caused by car dependence: Claim For a long time, I was excited about technologies related to transportation, including apps that made it easier for people to take an Uber to a train station or a scooter ride the last mile to work from a bus stop. I thought that they would help cities liberate themselves from a reliance on cars. I was wrong. Lead America’s cities are so reliant on cars not because we lack tech options or alternatives. It’s because we have policies that subsidize automobiles. There is free parking, zoning that separates people’s homes from work and shopping, and a lack of investment in public transit, walking and cycling to make alternatives to car trips more appealing. These are policy failures. Technology can be helpful, but often it’s extra credit when we haven’t passed the basic test. Evidence — David Zipper, a visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School who researches cities, technology, and how people and goods move around Technology improved people’s lives and incomes, but the gains were uneven: Claim Pretty much everything that makes our lives better, healthier and more secure comes from new technology. But since at least the Industrial Revolution, new technology also displaces people economically. What I and many other economists didn’t fully grasp was how many jobs would be lost to technology automation and how quickly that would happen. Tech also helped create new jobs, and wages have increased, but much of the gains went to high-end knowledge workers. There are good jobs out there, but we’re just not good at getting people to that work and training them for it. Evidence — Allison Schrager, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research center Educational records are still scattered all over the place: Claim It’s now much easier, though far from perfect, to gain access to my health records online because of policy and technological changes over the last decade. I assumed that electronic educational records would come swiftly after that. They haven’t. Workers, parents and companies still have no simple way to retrieve records from education and job training. It hurts us and the economy. Job seekers and military veterans don’t always remember all their certifications and training that could help them get better work and higher pay. Workers and parents have to do so much work to get school transcripts and other records that are often still kept on paper. Companies spend a lot of time verifying people’s credentials, degrees and licenses. The government should have centralized databases from accredited colleges and universities. It should be easy. Evidence — Julia Pollak, a labor economist with the career website ZipRecruiter Facebook didn’t learn from its grave harms: Claim I was wrong that playing a role in enabling genocide would be sufficient cause for a major tech company to make meaningful changes. Position — Anil Dash, chief executive of the programming company Glitch, a veteran technology entrepreneur and a frequent critic of Facebook. (Dash first wrote this as a response to Taylor’s tweet, and he told me that it’s still the biggest thing he has been wrong about in technology.) Evidence We’re still clinging to hopes for driverless cars: Position People claimed that we would have self-driving cars on every road by 2020. When 2020 came and went, I thought self-driving car enthusiasts would give up on the dream. I thought people would realize that autonomous vehicles don’t work in snow or bad weather. I thought that people would realize that the computer vision algorithms in self-driving cars don’t detect people of color well, that they’re as racist as the algorithms in soap dispensers or facial recognition systems. I hoped that a public conversation about racial bias in algorithms would lead to companies’ making better decisions about rolling out tech that has obvious racial, gender or ability bias. I was wrong. I would like to be less wrong about this in 2022. Evidence — Meredith Broussard, an artificial intelligence researcher and associate professor in data journalism at New York University Claim If there’s a lesson from these varied responses, it may be that we have a tendency to both overestimate and underestimate the amount of change that technology can spark in the world. Humility about technology feels like a useful mode for 2022. Guilty verdicts for Elizabeth Holmes: A jury found the founder of the failed blood testing start-up Theranos guilty on four charges related to defrauding investors, my colleagues Erin Griffith and Erin Woo write. Holmes is expected to appeal. Related: Erin Griffith writes that technologists tried to distance themselves from Theranos, but that the company and Holmes relied on the Silicon Valley start-up playbook of overly optimistic puffery, denigrating doubters and stoking a “fear of missing out.” Also read David Streitfeld on the indictment of the “fake it until you make it” culture. Calculating the threats of political violence: An investigation by ProPublica and The Washington Post found at least 650,000 posts in public Facebook groups that questioned the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election victory, including false information and violent threats, in the months before the Capitol riot one year ago. A personal word game that became a big hit: A software engineer in Brooklyn, Josh Wardle, created an online word game called Wordle just for his partner. It took off. “It’s just a game that’s fun,” Wardle told my colleague Daniel Victor. Spend 20 seconds taking in the sheep and the beautiful hills of Yorkshire. (Thanks to the Daily Respite newsletter for sharing this.) We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. Evidence If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. You can also read past On Tech columns. Concluding Statement

nytimes\tech-won-now-what.txt

Using custom data configuration default-a3949abcf19e313c

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-a3949abcf19e313c\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-a3949abcf19e313c\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. Here is a collection of past columns. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.7628713846206665}
Technology won. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.987981379032135}
One proof of that victory is that it’s hard to define what “technology” even is. Tech is more like a coat of new paint on everything than a definable set of products or industries. Health care is tech. Entertainment is tech. Schools are tech. Money is tech. Transportation is tech. We live through tech. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8878070116043091}
Technology is also in a liminal phase where the promise of what might be coming next coexists with the complicated reality of what is happening now. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.931239902973175}
We’re grappling with the benefits and the drawbacks of the still relatively recent popularity of smartphones in billions of pockets, online shopping and the social media megaphones that both help us build community and tear us apart. Many people are also leapfrogging ahead to a future in which computers might increasingly predict cancer, beam internet connections from space, control weapons and blur the line between what’s real and virtual. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.6484721899032593}
The “ugh, now what?!” stage of technology is colliding with the “what’s next?!” phase. It’s both exciting and unsettling. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.4924643933773041}
It’s confusing to know how to shape technology that exists today to best serve human needs, and also do the same for an imagined future that may never come. Package deliveries by drone and driverless cars were among the technologies that insiders predicted would be relatively common by now. (They’re still both far from that.) It’s reasonable to expect that some of today’s promised innovations will take awhile to go mainstream, if they ever do. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.617073118686676}
What may be most unusual about this “what’s next” moment in technology is that it’s happening relatively out in the open, with billions of people and power brokers watching or involved. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6486697793006897}
Steve Jobs and Apple dreamed up the first modern smartphone mostly in secret — although, people gossiped about the iPhone long before it was introduced in 2007. Today’s Apple and a zillion other companies are testing driverless cars on public roads and with regulators and the public peering over their shoulders. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.8829951882362366}
This is one example of what happens when technology is no longer confined to shiny gadgets or pixels on a screen. When technology is woven into everything, it doesn’t sneak up on us. Once, perhaps, technology felt like things that magical tech elves invented in their workshops and handed over for humans to adore. No more. Technology is normal, not magic. And — like everything else in the world — it can be good and bad. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9920530319213867}
That can sometimes feel disappointing, but it’s also healthy. We have all grown a little savvier about the nuanced effects of technology in our lives. Technology is neither the cause of nor the solution to all of life’s problems. (Yes, “Simpsons” nerds, I see you.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5133394598960876}
Uber and similar on-demand ride services are handy to both passengers and people who want a flexible job. Those services also helped clog roads despite early promises that they would ease traffic, and might have helped popularize a form of perilous work. Technology in our homes helped us muddle through work, school and a social life during the past couple of years. And yet it’s so hard to make a stupid printer work. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9555909037590027}
Technology didn’t cause the coronavirus pandemic, nor did it invent vaccines and distribute them to billions of people. Social media has contributed to social divisions in the U.S., but it’s just one of the forces of polarization. Technology is probably not the magical answer to climate change, nor to climbing rates of violence in parts of the U.S. Technology can assist us in finding the community that we need, but it can’t do the difficult work of sustaining those connections. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.944556713104248}
I hope that we’ve become skeptical but not cynical about the forces of technology. We can believe that tech can help, and we can also keep in mind that sometimes it can do harm. And sometimes tech doesn’t matter much at all. Technology alone does not change the world. We do. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.9665260314941406}
I wrote this week about my eagerness for more technologies that can give us microdoses of human empathy and connection. And I asked what technology you wanted most in 2022 and beyond. On Tech readers are smart! Here are a few of your responses. (They have been lightly edited.) {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.5827231407165527}
Stephen Young in New Orleans: {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8584721684455872}
I would pay to use an app that connects me IRL with people who share similar interests. It would be so cool to open an app and see a heat map that indicates the presence of people who share my interests (and want to connect) and who are in public places. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5947943329811096}
(Editor’s note: You can try Meetup for a similar experience, although it’s not exactly like this.) {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.572155773639679}
Mo in Vancouver, British Columbia: {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8053264617919922}
I’d like some tech that inspires me to make time for non-tech activities I used to love but have drifted away from. Things like painting and dancing around for the fun of it. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7929539084434509}
Jack Schaller in Philadelphia: {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8165440559387207}
I would like to have better “intelligence” built into our email client engines to intuitively sort the fire hose of mail we all receive into bins for processing, storing, referencing, etc. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6248763203620911}
Gerald G. Stiebel in Santa Fe, N.M.: {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5965427756309509}
I would love to see tech that helped with the continuous issues that we have with our tech. Let us know why Xfinity suddenly went out on both of our TVs at the same time. Why do my Sony headphones beep and stop my music or video until I reset them? Why do my apps suddenly change how they work when there is an update that “improves” my service? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9359261989593506}
If there were one place all this information would appear with recommendations for repair or to restore my apps and interrelated material, this would take a lot of pressure off our lives, particularly if we are over 30. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.48710688948631287}
Andrew in Toronto: {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.9045478105545044}
We all long to travel again. To encounter new places, to meet others and to engage different cultures. NOT in the metaverse, but in the real world. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.360502690076828}
Where is the technology that can listen to what I want, understand my location and interpret my answers to provide suggestions on things to do, places to go and experiences available to me that meet the need for adventure, romance, relaxation and discovery? What algorithm exists that can figure out the things that will feed happiness and encourage me to explore a city or neighborhood? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7671767473220825}
Judy S.: {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.9062044024467468}
It took me all of two seconds to come up with this tech I want to have: an automatic feed machine that will take one’s old (really old) music tapes / cassettes / CDs and transfer / convert the contents to one ginormous [data file] worth of MP3s. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.47921282052993774}
Aleksi V. in Helsinki, Finland: {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5717969536781311}
The technology I’d most like to see in 2022 is anything that brings us real, meaningful progress on the climate crisis. I trust that there are many organizations out there working on projects geared toward solving it, but it feels like it’s been a while since I’ve heard of something really impactful in that area. It would just be nice to see something that could give me hope for our future again. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.6158891916275024}
Capping a complicated year for Amazon and its hourly workers: My colleague Karen Weise reports that Amazon reached a settlement that would give company workers greater flexibility to organize unions in its buildings. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.849525511264801}
“Victims really are on their own.” Greg Bensinger from The New York Times’s Opinion section says that Uber’s policies discourage its customer service agents from suggesting that passengers and drivers call the police about claims of sexual assault or other crimes. “Police reports can puncture Uber’s carefully crafted safety image — and open the company up to more lawsuits and responsibility,” Greg writes in his column. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9858443737030029}
Some people get bored with their Alexa toys quickly: Amazon sells lots of voice-controlled smart speakers and other gadgets over the holidays. But Bloomberg Businessweek reports that some years, up to one in four of those new Alexa device owners stop using them within a couple of weeks. (A subscription may be required.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9692032337188721}
My favorite version* of “My Favorite Things” is this TikTok duet from the gospel singer Robyn McGhee. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4456760287284851}
*(Other than Julie Andrews’s.) {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6311864852905273}
We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.39380958676338196}
If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. You can also read past On Tech columns. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.4619752764701843}

This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. Here is a collection of past columns. Lead Technology won. Claim One proof of that victory is that it’s hard to define what “technology” even is. Tech is more like a coat of new paint on everything than a definable set of products or industries. Health care is tech. Entertainment is tech. Schools are tech. Money is tech. Transportation is tech. We live through tech. Evidence Technology is also in a liminal phase where the promise of what might be coming next coexists with the complicated reality of what is happening now. Claim We’re grappling with the benefits and the drawbacks of the still relatively recent popularity of smartphones in billions of pockets, online shopping and the social media megaphones that both help us build community and tear us apart. Many people are also leapfrogging ahead to a future in which computers might increasingly predict cancer, beam internet connections from space, control weapons and blur the line between what’s real and virtual. Concluding Statement The “ugh, now what?!” stage of technology is colliding with the “what’s next?!” phase. It’s both exciting and unsettling. Lead It’s confusing to know how to shape technology that exists today to best serve human needs, and also do the same for an imagined future that may never come. Package deliveries by drone and driverless cars were among the technologies that insiders predicted would be relatively common by now. (They’re still both far from that.) It’s reasonable to expect that some of today’s promised innovations will take awhile to go mainstream, if they ever do. Evidence What may be most unusual about this “what’s next” moment in technology is that it’s happening relatively out in the open, with billions of people and power brokers watching or involved. Claim Steve Jobs and Apple dreamed up the first modern smartphone mostly in secret — although, people gossiped about the iPhone long before it was introduced in 2007. Today’s Apple and a zillion other companies are testing driverless cars on public roads and with regulators and the public peering over their shoulders. Lead This is one example of what happens when technology is no longer confined to shiny gadgets or pixels on a screen. When technology is woven into everything, it doesn’t sneak up on us. Once, perhaps, technology felt like things that magical tech elves invented in their workshops and handed over for humans to adore. No more. Technology is normal, not magic. And — like everything else in the world — it can be good and bad. That can sometimes feel disappointing, but it’s also healthy. We have all grown a little savvier about the nuanced effects of technology in our lives. Technology is neither the cause of nor the solution to all of life’s problems. (Yes, “Simpsons” nerds, I see you.) Uber and similar on-demand ride services are handy to both passengers and people who want a flexible job. Those services also helped clog roads despite early promises that they would ease traffic, and might have helped popularize a form of perilous work. Technology in our homes helped us muddle through work, school and a social life during the past couple of years. And yet it’s so hard to make a stupid printer work. Technology didn’t cause the coronavirus pandemic, nor did it invent vaccines and distribute them to billions of people. Social media has contributed to social divisions in the U.S., but it’s just one of the forces of polarization. Technology is probably not the magical answer to climate change, nor to climbing rates of violence in parts of the U.S. Technology can assist us in finding the community that we need, but it can’t do the difficult work of sustaining those connections. Evidence I hope that we’ve become skeptical but not cynical about the forces of technology. We can believe that tech can help, and we can also keep in mind that sometimes it can do harm. And sometimes tech doesn’t matter much at all. Technology alone does not change the world. We do. Concluding Statement I wrote this week about my eagerness for more technologies that can give us microdoses of human empathy and connection. And I asked what technology you wanted most in 2022 and beyond. On Tech readers are smart! Here are a few of your responses. (They have been lightly edited.) Lead Stephen Young in New Orleans: Claim I would pay to use an app that connects me IRL with people who share similar interests. It would be so cool to open an app and see a heat map that indicates the presence of people who share my interests (and want to connect) and who are in public places. Evidence (Editor’s note: You can try Meetup for a similar experience, although it’s not exactly like this.) Mo in Vancouver, British Columbia: Claim I’d like some tech that inspires me to make time for non-tech activities I used to love but have drifted away from. Things like painting and dancing around for the fun of it. Evidence Jack Schaller in Philadelphia: I would like to have better “intelligence” built into our email client engines to intuitively sort the fire hose of mail we all receive into bins for processing, storing, referencing, etc. Gerald G. Stiebel in Santa Fe, N.M.: Claim I would love to see tech that helped with the continuous issues that we have with our tech. Let us know why Xfinity suddenly went out on both of our TVs at the same time. Why do my Sony headphones beep and stop my music or video until I reset them? Why do my apps suddenly change how they work when there is an update that “improves” my service? If there were one place all this information would appear with recommendations for repair or to restore my apps and interrelated material, this would take a lot of pressure off our lives, particularly if we are over 30. Evidence Andrew in Toronto: We all long to travel again. To encounter new places, to meet others and to engage different cultures. NOT in the metaverse, but in the real world. Claim Where is the technology that can listen to what I want, understand my location and interpret my answers to provide suggestions on things to do, places to go and experiences available to me that meet the need for adventure, romance, relaxation and discovery? What algorithm exists that can figure out the things that will feed happiness and encourage me to explore a city or neighborhood? Evidence Judy S.: Claim It took me all of two seconds to come up with this tech I want to have: an automatic feed machine that will take one’s old (really old) music tapes / cassettes / CDs and transfer / convert the contents to one ginormous [data file] worth of MP3s. Evidence Aleksi V. in Helsinki, Finland: Claim The technology I’d most like to see in 2022 is anything that brings us real, meaningful progress on the climate crisis. I trust that there are many organizations out there working on projects geared toward solving it, but it feels like it’s been a while since I’ve heard of something really impactful in that area. It would just be nice to see something that could give me hope for our future again. Concluding Statement Capping a complicated year for Amazon and its hourly workers: My colleague Karen Weise reports that Amazon reached a settlement that would give company workers greater flexibility to organize unions in its buildings. “Victims really are on their own.” Greg Bensinger from The New York Times’s Opinion section says that Uber’s policies discourage its customer service agents from suggesting that passengers and drivers call the police about claims of sexual assault or other crimes. “Police reports can puncture Uber’s carefully crafted safety image — and open the company up to more lawsuits and responsibility,” Greg writes in his column. Some people get bored with their Alexa toys quickly: Amazon sells lots of voice-controlled smart speakers and other gadgets over the holidays. But Bloomberg Businessweek reports that some years, up to one in four of those new Alexa device owners stop using them within a couple of weeks. (A subscription may be required.) My favorite version* of “My Favorite Things” is this TikTok duet from the gospel singer Robyn McGhee. Evidence *(Other than Julie Andrews’s.) Claim We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. Evidence If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. You can also read past On Tech columns. Concluding Statement

nytimes\teresa-reichlen-retiring-from-new-york-city-ballet.txt

Using custom data configuration default-cf4f83160810fbc3

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-cf4f83160810fbc3\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-cf4f83160810fbc3\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

New York City Ballet’s fall season came and went, and if Teresa Reichlen was being honest with herself, she wasn’t feeling it. This was concerning. What kind of dancer wasn’t itching to perform after 18 months off the stage? {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.475759893655777}
“I had a few shows that were wonderful and felt like they’ve always felt,” she said, but “I was struggling a little bit. Everyone was so, so, so excited to be back and I just wasn’t at that level.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7018781304359436}
An injury kept her from performing in “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker.” One night in December as she played on the floor with her son, Ozzie, now 11 months old, she said a thought crossed her mind: “I should be at the theater performing right now, but I wouldn’t want to not be here with Ozzie at night.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9393021464347839}
At that moment, she knew what to do. “I’ve had the crazy ballerina life,” she said. “I’ve traveled all over the world. I’ve had the crazy schedule, danced until 11:30 every night. I loved it. I’ve never just been a normal person before, so that’s kind of thrilling to me.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9554290771484375}
On Feb. 19, Reichlen will dance her farewell performance in Balanchine’s one-act “Swan Lake” before moving on to her next career: director of Shrine, a Lower East Side gallery with a focus on outsider and self-taught artists that her husband, Scott Ogden, opened in 2016. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9121173024177551}
If Reichlen is matter-of-fact offstage, the sort of person who doesn’t suffer fools, onstage she is mysterious, understated, remote. Wendy Whelan, City Ballet’s associate artistic director and a former principal, said that her husband, the artist and photographer David Michalek, calls Reichlen one of the company’s Hitchcock blondes. This season she even brought a dash of Grace Kelly to the Stripper role in Balanchine’s “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” — elegant, knowing and a little sly as she sliced her long legs into the air. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9823461174964905}
“She’s got this underrated glamour that pops out, and you’re just like, ‘Whoa: look at those legs, look at that body,’” Whelan said. “She’s got incredible facility, and she can shape it in so many different ways: angular, curvy, classical, contemporary.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8182289004325867}
Russell Janzen, one of her partners and a friend, calls her selfless, the kind of dancer who puts the ballet first. “There is a little bit of a cool detachment,” he said. “It’s not judgmental. Sometimes it’s amused, which I think is really fun, especially when it’s one of those works where it’s so in her wheelhouse — it allows you to enjoy the choreography with her.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.964209258556366}
Reichlen, 37, has been dancing as long as she can remember. She didn’t know much about Balanchine, a founder of City Ballet, when she was growing up in Virginia, but the City Ballet-affiliated School of American Ballet was on her radar because no one from her dance school had ever been accepted. “I was kind of scared to try out for it, and then I did and I got in,” she said. “I was like, I should probably go — like I’m the only person that has gotten in.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9519364833831787}
After that summer course, she was invited to stay for the year. In 2000, Reichlen became an apprentice and in 2001, a member of the corps de ballet, where even dancing in the last row, she was a standout. She’s tall — around 5 feet 9 inches — which has led to her being cast in many coveted Balanchine roles: the tall girl in “Rubies,” the glittering lead in “Diamonds,” as well as in “Firebird,” “Symphony in C” and “Prodigal Son” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9726408123970032}
But she is rare: Despite her height, she can jump. “We always said Tess had the best saut de chat in the company,” Jonathan Stafford, City Ballet’s artistic director, said of the large leap. “She would fly through the air. I would joke with her that I had no chance next to her.” {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.6924299597740173}
One of his favorite memories of dancing with her is when she was thrown onstage in Balanchine’s “Firebird” at the last minute in 2007. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4878237843513489}
She had around an hour and a half to learn the entire ballet. “She knew every phrase, she just didn’t know the order,” Stafford said. “She would look at me onstage during the performance, and I would say the first step of the next phrase and she would just go into it and get it completely right.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9704954028129578}
Stafford is going to miss her as a person, too. As an officer at the American Guild of Musical Artists, or A.G.M.A., she fought for dancers’ rights; when Stafford took over as City Ballet’s artistic director, in 2019, he relied on her as a sounding board. “Who am I going to call randomly any time of day and be like, ‘I need your advice?’” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9435332417488098}
One of Reichlen’s most impressive moments onstage involved speaking, not dancing. It was after a photo-sharing scandal, which had come just after the resignation of the company’s longtime leader, Peter Martins, who left amid allegations of sexual harassment and verbal and physical abuse. (He denied the accusations.) Reichlen delivered a speech that she had written with Adrian Danchig-Waring, another principal dancer. It began: “We will not put art before common decency or allow talent to sway our moral compass.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9913538098335266}
Whelan, who likened Reichlen in that moment to Lady Liberty, said the speech felt seismic. It was as if she had pushed away a cloud and signaled “the start of a new hope, a new way forward,” Whelan said. “It made everybody rethink the old and how we need to shift all these parts that have been cemented in place for so long. She cracked it open.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9493155479431152}
Reichlen said she had never been so nervous in her life. “I feel like that defines me more than my dancing in a weird way,” she said. “Like that’s more my personality than ballerina.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9264411926269531}
She wanted to be involved with A.G.M.A. because of frustration with a lot of things at City Ballet. “It was just the only way I could see to fix things or try to fix things,” she said. “When I first got in, we used to get our daily schedule at 7:30 p.m. the evening before. Which is insane. It’s insane. So that’s one of my proudest achievements — we get our schedule a day and a half in advance now.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.966214120388031}
But despite how important her career has been on- and offstage, Reichlen almost left the company during her time as a soloist. “I was doing the same things over and over again,” she said. “I was extraordinarily restless and really unhappy.” {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.781977653503418}
She decided to stick around for a year or so and to continue with school — she was also a student a Barnard College, studying biology. “I was just like, OK, you better have fun, you’re only going to do this for another year or so,” she said. “I tried to let go a little bit. And then also there were a bunch of injuries, so all of a sudden I was dancing a lot, and then I was happy.” In 2009, she was promoted to principal; including her apprenticeship, she’s been with the company 22 years.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9785078763961792}
Now, with her performing days winding down, she said: “It’s bizarre having a finite amount of dancing left. I’m trying not to put pressure on myself and to be kind to myself in these last few weeks. I’m trying to just be like, you’re a good dancer. You look great.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8172962069511414}
And she’s excited about her future at Shrine, which is opening a Los Angeles branch in summer. During our video interview, she sat under a painting by Sanford Darling; later she grabbed her laptop for a tour of some of the other works that fill their apartment: “Hawkins Bolden is actually my favorite,” she said of the blind, self-taught artist as she aimed the camera at “Untitled (scarecrow),” made of metal wheelbarrow, garden hose and wire. “To live with these pieces? I used to think it was crazy. But when you live with them, they kind of take on this life that’s really joyful.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9896987080574036}
She has also loved getting to know artists and “to watch the success happen and know that you were maybe a small part of helping that happen,” she said. “My husband’s like, ‘Wait til you have your first sale, you’re going to feel amazing. You get an adrenaline rush.’ I was like, ‘Oh, so it’s kind of like performing.”’ {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9652237296104431}
But before she can begin her new life, her farewell performance is looming. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8848296403884888}
It will be “typical Tess fashion: low key,” Stafford said. “During the bows, she doesn’t want bouquets. She just wants single roses, and she doesn’t want it to be a parade of all the principal dancers who feel like they have to do it. She just wants anyone who wants to give her a rose to give her a rose. And she’ll gladly accept it.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9819308519363403}
He added, “She’s pretty popular. I imagine a bunch of dancers are going to want to do it.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6000560522079468}
Clearly, this stresses Reichlen out. “I just really enjoy dancing,” she said. “The recognition and the pouring on of praise just makes me feel very uncomfortable. And in retirements in the past, when I’m at them, the whole time I’m thinking, this is my worst nightmare.” Well, maybe not her worst nightmare — she paused, clearly agonized. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9237374067306519}
“It’s not me,” she said. “I’m the dancer who stands in the back corner of the studio. I enjoy being onstage, obviously, but it’s funny: I would be happy if the curtain came down and we didn’t have to bow.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5678132772445679}

New York City Ballet’s fall season came and went, and if Teresa Reichlen was being honest with herself, she wasn’t feeling it. This was concerning. What kind of dancer wasn’t itching to perform after 18 months off the stage? “I had a few shows that were wonderful and felt like they’ve always felt,” she said, but “I was struggling a little bit. Everyone was so, so, so excited to be back and I just wasn’t at that level.” An injury kept her from performing in “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker.” One night in December as she played on the floor with her son, Ozzie, now 11 months old, she said a thought crossed her mind: “I should be at the theater performing right now, but I wouldn’t want to not be here with Ozzie at night.” At that moment, she knew what to do. “I’ve had the crazy ballerina life,” she said. “I’ve traveled all over the world. I’ve had the crazy schedule, danced until 11:30 every night. I loved it. I’ve never just been a normal person before, so that’s kind of thrilling to me.” On Feb. 19, Reichlen will dance her farewell performance in Balanchine’s one-act “Swan Lake” before moving on to her next career: director of Shrine, a Lower East Side gallery with a focus on outsider and self-taught artists that her husband, Scott Ogden, opened in 2016. If Reichlen is matter-of-fact offstage, the sort of person who doesn’t suffer fools, onstage she is mysterious, understated, remote. Wendy Whelan, City Ballet’s associate artistic director and a former principal, said that her husband, the artist and photographer David Michalek, calls Reichlen one of the company’s Hitchcock blondes. This season she even brought a dash of Grace Kelly to the Stripper role in Balanchine’s “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” — elegant, knowing and a little sly as she sliced her long legs into the air. “She’s got this underrated glamour that pops out, and you’re just like, ‘Whoa: look at those legs, look at that body,’” Whelan said. “She’s got incredible facility, and she can shape it in so many different ways: angular, curvy, classical, contemporary.” Russell Janzen, one of her partners and a friend, calls her selfless, the kind of dancer who puts the ballet first. “There is a little bit of a cool detachment,” he said. “It’s not judgmental. Sometimes it’s amused, which I think is really fun, especially when it’s one of those works where it’s so in her wheelhouse — it allows you to enjoy the choreography with her.” Reichlen, 37, has been dancing as long as she can remember. She didn’t know much about Balanchine, a founder of City Ballet, when she was growing up in Virginia, but the City Ballet-affiliated School of American Ballet was on her radar because no one from her dance school had ever been accepted. “I was kind of scared to try out for it, and then I did and I got in,” she said. “I was like, I should probably go — like I’m the only person that has gotten in.” After that summer course, she was invited to stay for the year. In 2000, Reichlen became an apprentice and in 2001, a member of the corps de ballet, where even dancing in the last row, she was a standout. She’s tall — around 5 feet 9 inches — which has led to her being cast in many coveted Balanchine roles: the tall girl in “Rubies,” the glittering lead in “Diamonds,” as well as in “Firebird,” “Symphony in C” and “Prodigal Son” Evidence But she is rare: Despite her height, she can jump. “We always said Tess had the best saut de chat in the company,” Jonathan Stafford, City Ballet’s artistic director, said of the large leap. “She would fly through the air. I would joke with her that I had no chance next to her.” Rebuttal One of his favorite memories of dancing with her is when she was thrown onstage in Balanchine’s “Firebird” at the last minute in 2007. She had around an hour and a half to learn the entire ballet. “She knew every phrase, she just didn’t know the order,” Stafford said. “She would look at me onstage during the performance, and I would say the first step of the next phrase and she would just go into it and get it completely right.” Stafford is going to miss her as a person, too. As an officer at the American Guild of Musical Artists, or A.G.M.A., she fought for dancers’ rights; when Stafford took over as City Ballet’s artistic director, in 2019, he relied on her as a sounding board. “Who am I going to call randomly any time of day and be like, ‘I need your advice?’” One of Reichlen’s most impressive moments onstage involved speaking, not dancing. It was after a photo-sharing scandal, which had come just after the resignation of the company’s longtime leader, Peter Martins, who left amid allegations of sexual harassment and verbal and physical abuse. (He denied the accusations.) Reichlen delivered a speech that she had written with Adrian Danchig-Waring, another principal dancer. It began: “We will not put art before common decency or allow talent to sway our moral compass.” Whelan, who likened Reichlen in that moment to Lady Liberty, said the speech felt seismic. It was as if she had pushed away a cloud and signaled “the start of a new hope, a new way forward,” Whelan said. “It made everybody rethink the old and how we need to shift all these parts that have been cemented in place for so long. She cracked it open.” Reichlen said she had never been so nervous in her life. “I feel like that defines me more than my dancing in a weird way,” she said. “Like that’s more my personality than ballerina.” She wanted to be involved with A.G.M.A. because of frustration with a lot of things at City Ballet. “It was just the only way I could see to fix things or try to fix things,” she said. “When I first got in, we used to get our daily schedule at 7:30 p.m. the evening before. Which is insane. It’s insane. So that’s one of my proudest achievements — we get our schedule a day and a half in advance now.” Evidence But despite how important her career has been on- and offstage, Reichlen almost left the company during her time as a soloist. “I was doing the same things over and over again,” she said. “I was extraordinarily restless and really unhappy.” Rebuttal She decided to stick around for a year or so and to continue with school — she was also a student a Barnard College, studying biology. “I was just like, OK, you better have fun, you’re only going to do this for another year or so,” she said. “I tried to let go a little bit. And then also there were a bunch of injuries, so all of a sudden I was dancing a lot, and then I was happy.” In 2009, she was promoted to principal; including her apprenticeship, she’s been with the company 22 years. Now, with her performing days winding down, she said: “It’s bizarre having a finite amount of dancing left. I’m trying not to put pressure on myself and to be kind to myself in these last few weeks. I’m trying to just be like, you’re a good dancer. You look great.” And she’s excited about her future at Shrine, which is opening a Los Angeles branch in summer. During our video interview, she sat under a painting by Sanford Darling; later she grabbed her laptop for a tour of some of the other works that fill their apartment: “Hawkins Bolden is actually my favorite,” she said of the blind, self-taught artist as she aimed the camera at “Untitled (scarecrow),” made of metal wheelbarrow, garden hose and wire. “To live with these pieces? I used to think it was crazy. But when you live with them, they kind of take on this life that’s really joyful.” She has also loved getting to know artists and “to watch the success happen and know that you were maybe a small part of helping that happen,” she said. “My husband’s like, ‘Wait til you have your first sale, you’re going to feel amazing. You get an adrenaline rush.’ I was like, ‘Oh, so it’s kind of like performing.”’ Evidence But before she can begin her new life, her farewell performance is looming. Rebuttal It will be “typical Tess fashion: low key,” Stafford said. “During the bows, she doesn’t want bouquets. She just wants single roses, and she doesn’t want it to be a parade of all the principal dancers who feel like they have to do it. She just wants anyone who wants to give her a rose to give her a rose. And she’ll gladly accept it.” He added, “She’s pretty popular. I imagine a bunch of dancers are going to want to do it.” Clearly, this stresses Reichlen out. “I just really enjoy dancing,” she said. “The recognition and the pouring on of praise just makes me feel very uncomfortable. And in retirements in the past, when I’m at them, the whole time I’m thinking, this is my worst nightmare.” Well, maybe not her worst nightmare — she paused, clearly agonized. “It’s not me,” she said. “I’m the dancer who stands in the back corner of the studio. I enjoy being onstage, obviously, but it’s funny: I would be happy if the curtain came down and we didn’t have to bow.” Evidence

nytimes\texas-primary-voting-law.txt

Using custom data configuration default-4b370a42fb9c0131

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-4b370a42fb9c0131\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-4b370a42fb9c0131\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Thousands of Texans have had their absentee ballot applications denied as a result of regulations put in place under the state’s new election law, a jump in rejections that could force many older and disabled voters to either vote in person or not at all in primary elections early next month. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7699787616729736}
With a Friday deadline, election officials in the state’s most populous counties have rejected 10 percent — or 12,000 — of the absentee ballot applications received as of Thursday, according to voting data obtained by The New York Times. Officials said the rejection rate reflected a significant increase from past years, and most often because a voter failed to satisfy the new identification requirements. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9793884754180908}
“It’s high, there’s no question,” Bruce Sherbet, the election administrator for Collin County, northeast of Dallas, said of the number of rejections. Mr. Sherbet said his county typically rejects a handful of applications. This year, that number was roughly 300. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9321434497833252}
The Times tallied rejected applications in 12 of the 13 Texas counties with more than 400,000 residents. Bexar County, home to San Antonio, did not disclose its numbers. The total of rejected ballots could still change as applications were still arriving ahead of the Friday night deadline. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.985597550868988}
The figures are the broadest look yet at the impact of the voting law passed in August by the Republican-led legislature in an attempt to tighten procedures and, supporters of the law argued, to restore voter confidence in the election process. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4717864394187927}
As they prepare for the March 1 primary, election officials say the new law is sowing confusion among voters and further burdening already taxed local election offices. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.367303729057312}
As one of 18 states to pass more restrictive voting laws after the 2020 presidential election, Texas’ rocky rollout could provide a preview of what could come elsewhere. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6631573438644409}
Confusion over absentee ballot applications has a more limited impact in Texas than in many other states, however. Texas only allows voters who are over 65 or who have a verified disability to vote by mail. During the 2020 election, more than 1 million Texans voted by mail, although that number is expected to fall, as turnout regularly dips in the midterm elections. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9451914429664612}
There are signs that the problems, particularly with new identification rules, may extend beyond applications to processing ballots. With less than a week of data on returned ballots, Harris County said its ballot rejection rates were as high as 34 percent, and Dallas County had rejected about 20 percent of ballots. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5475279092788696}
“We’re seeing an alarming number of mail ballots being rejected and local officials are left scrambling to protect voter access as the deadline looms,” Isabel Longoria, the elections administrator of Harris County, said in a statement. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8915630578994751}
The new law, a key Republican priority after former President Donald J. Trump claimed there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election, added a host of new restrictions to voting in the state, including banning drive-through voting and 24-hour voting, limiting drop boxes, adding new identification requirements to absentee ballots and preventing local election officials from promoting absentee voting. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8761066198348999}
Republicans vowed that the law made it “easier to vote, harder to cheat.” But some voters in Texas have found the absentee process far from easy, even those who are highly motivated. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5293179750442505}
In Corpus Christi, Linda White, 72, has been voting by mail for several years with her husband Jack, 74. A Democrat, she said that she and her husband, a Republican, have had their applications rejected three times this year. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9477021098136902}
The first time, they inadvertently used an old form posted on the Texas secretary of state’s website (the form was updated in January). Then, they were rejected for overlooking the fields for both their driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. Finally, Ms. White printed out a new application, and she still did not see the required fields, so she hand-wrote both identification numbers on the side of her application. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9836369156837463}
That was rejected as well. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.9151380062103271}
“If I hadn’t just been a determined, hardheaded old woman, and my husband just as determined and hardheaded, I think I would have given up after a couple of shots at this,” Ms. White said in an interview. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5548847913742065}
The new rules require voters to put either their Texas driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number on ballot applications. If voters omit something, or make an error in another field, they can correct their applications up to 11 days before an election. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9057288765907288}
Heidi Schoenfeld, a precinct chair in San Antonio who currently serves on the voter protection committee for her county’s Democratic Party, had her application for an absentee ballot rejected twice this year. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7008504867553711}
“We’ve been voters continuously for 53 years, we’ve been registered that long, and I’ve been following what we’re supposed to do,” said Ms. Schoenfeld. “And if we can’t get it right, there’s just something wrong.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8135312795639038}
Some political campaigns and the state parties have stepped in to promote absentee voting, although one prominent candidate was found to be giving out incorrect information. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5236027836799622}
The re-election campaign of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, instructed supporters to mail their ballot applications to the secretary of state instead of to county officials, a clear break with the rules that could have resulted in the rejection of every supporter who followed those instructions. The secretary of state said it forwarded the applications to the counties. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9788702726364136}
The Patrick campaign said the secretary of state was “trusted and respected” and wanted to “give voters an added layer of comfort,” Allen Blakemore, a campaign consultant for Mr. Patrick, wrote in an email to the Texas Tribune, which first reported on the Patrick campaign’s ballot applications. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9047260284423828}
The office of Gov. Greg Abbott, the Republican governor who made new election legislation a top priority, issued a statement placing some blame for the rise in ballot rejections on local election officials. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6490788459777832}
“Reports of high rejection rates of mail ballot applications at the county level are the result of election officials erroneously interpreting the law and going to the press instead of the Texas Secretary of State’s office for assistance,” said Nan Tolson, a spokeswoman for Mr. Abbott. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8835253119468689}
Sam Taylor, a spokesman for the Texas secretary of state, said that the office has been working since December to help educate voters and election officials on the coming changes. But Mr. Taylor allowed that the time crunch — the new law went into effect in December — was causing problems. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9169726371765137}
“It’s a lot to get used to in a very short amount of time,” he said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5220323801040649}
Local election officials said they knew these problems would arise when the new law was passed last year. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.2718105614185333}
“We anticipated this, we expressed it to the Legislature, but it went unheeded,” said Remi Garza, the top election official in Cameron County. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4657157361507416}
Some rejections stemmed from layering the requirements of the new law atop a byzantine electoral bureaucracy. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.8821319341659546}
Following her first rejected application, Ms. Schoenfeld was told that the county election office did not have her driver’s license number on file, and that she would need to fill out a new voter registration form. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5065242648124695}
She filled a registration form and a new application and sent them back on the same day. Yet the two forms are handled in two different suites at the county election office, and the registration had not been processed before her ballot application was reviewed. She was rejected again. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9726207852363586}
“The system is designed for failure,” said Ms. Schoenfeld. “It’s designed to make it very, very difficult for people to vote.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.41441869735717773}

Thousands of Texans have had their absentee ballot applications denied as a result of regulations put in place under the state’s new election law, a jump in rejections that could force many older and disabled voters to either vote in person or not at all in primary elections early next month. With a Friday deadline, election officials in the state’s most populous counties have rejected 10 percent — or 12,000 — of the absentee ballot applications received as of Thursday, according to voting data obtained by The New York Times. Officials said the rejection rate reflected a significant increase from past years, and most often because a voter failed to satisfy the new identification requirements. “It’s high, there’s no question,” Bruce Sherbet, the election administrator for Collin County, northeast of Dallas, said of the number of rejections. Mr. Sherbet said his county typically rejects a handful of applications. This year, that number was roughly 300. The Times tallied rejected applications in 12 of the 13 Texas counties with more than 400,000 residents. Bexar County, home to San Antonio, did not disclose its numbers. The total of rejected ballots could still change as applications were still arriving ahead of the Friday night deadline. The figures are the broadest look yet at the impact of the voting law passed in August by the Republican-led legislature in an attempt to tighten procedures and, supporters of the law argued, to restore voter confidence in the election process. Evidence As they prepare for the March 1 primary, election officials say the new law is sowing confusion among voters and further burdening already taxed local election offices. As one of 18 states to pass more restrictive voting laws after the 2020 presidential election, Texas’ rocky rollout could provide a preview of what could come elsewhere. Claim Confusion over absentee ballot applications has a more limited impact in Texas than in many other states, however. Texas only allows voters who are over 65 or who have a verified disability to vote by mail. During the 2020 election, more than 1 million Texans voted by mail, although that number is expected to fall, as turnout regularly dips in the midterm elections. There are signs that the problems, particularly with new identification rules, may extend beyond applications to processing ballots. With less than a week of data on returned ballots, Harris County said its ballot rejection rates were as high as 34 percent, and Dallas County had rejected about 20 percent of ballots. “We’re seeing an alarming number of mail ballots being rejected and local officials are left scrambling to protect voter access as the deadline looms,” Isabel Longoria, the elections administrator of Harris County, said in a statement. The new law, a key Republican priority after former President Donald J. Trump claimed there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election, added a host of new restrictions to voting in the state, including banning drive-through voting and 24-hour voting, limiting drop boxes, adding new identification requirements to absentee ballots and preventing local election officials from promoting absentee voting. Republicans vowed that the law made it “easier to vote, harder to cheat.” But some voters in Texas have found the absentee process far from easy, even those who are highly motivated. In Corpus Christi, Linda White, 72, has been voting by mail for several years with her husband Jack, 74. A Democrat, she said that she and her husband, a Republican, have had their applications rejected three times this year. The first time, they inadvertently used an old form posted on the Texas secretary of state’s website (the form was updated in January). Then, they were rejected for overlooking the fields for both their driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. Finally, Ms. White printed out a new application, and she still did not see the required fields, so she hand-wrote both identification numbers on the side of her application. Evidence That was rejected as well. Rebuttal “If I hadn’t just been a determined, hardheaded old woman, and my husband just as determined and hardheaded, I think I would have given up after a couple of shots at this,” Ms. White said in an interview. The new rules require voters to put either their Texas driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number on ballot applications. If voters omit something, or make an error in another field, they can correct their applications up to 11 days before an election. Heidi Schoenfeld, a precinct chair in San Antonio who currently serves on the voter protection committee for her county’s Democratic Party, had her application for an absentee ballot rejected twice this year. “We’ve been voters continuously for 53 years, we’ve been registered that long, and I’ve been following what we’re supposed to do,” said Ms. Schoenfeld. “And if we can’t get it right, there’s just something wrong.” Evidence Some political campaigns and the state parties have stepped in to promote absentee voting, although one prominent candidate was found to be giving out incorrect information. Claim The re-election campaign of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, instructed supporters to mail their ballot applications to the secretary of state instead of to county officials, a clear break with the rules that could have resulted in the rejection of every supporter who followed those instructions. The secretary of state said it forwarded the applications to the counties. The Patrick campaign said the secretary of state was “trusted and respected” and wanted to “give voters an added layer of comfort,” Allen Blakemore, a campaign consultant for Mr. Patrick, wrote in an email to the Texas Tribune, which first reported on the Patrick campaign’s ballot applications. The office of Gov. Greg Abbott, the Republican governor who made new election legislation a top priority, issued a statement placing some blame for the rise in ballot rejections on local election officials. “Reports of high rejection rates of mail ballot applications at the county level are the result of election officials erroneously interpreting the law and going to the press instead of the Texas Secretary of State’s office for assistance,” said Nan Tolson, a spokeswoman for Mr. Abbott. Sam Taylor, a spokesman for the Texas secretary of state, said that the office has been working since December to help educate voters and election officials on the coming changes. But Mr. Taylor allowed that the time crunch — the new law went into effect in December — was causing problems. Evidence “It’s a lot to get used to in a very short amount of time,” he said. Claim Local election officials said they knew these problems would arise when the new law was passed last year. Counterclaim “We anticipated this, we expressed it to the Legislature, but it went unheeded,” said Remi Garza, the top election official in Cameron County. Evidence Some rejections stemmed from layering the requirements of the new law atop a byzantine electoral bureaucracy. Counterclaim Following her first rejected application, Ms. Schoenfeld was told that the county election office did not have her driver’s license number on file, and that she would need to fill out a new voter registration form. Claim She filled a registration form and a new application and sent them back on the same day. Yet the two forms are handled in two different suites at the county election office, and the registration had not been processed before her ballot application was reviewed. She was rejected again. Evidence “The system is designed for failure,” said Ms. Schoenfeld. “It’s designed to make it very, very difficult for people to vote.” Claim

nytimes\the-gilded-age.txt

Using custom data configuration default-44cfa3481ef4da9b

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-44cfa3481ef4da9b\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-44cfa3481ef4da9b\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

In 1951, the N.A.A.C.P. had clearly seen enough of the televised version of “Amos ‘n’ Andy” — the visual adaptation of the popular radio show that had white minstrels voicing supposed Black characters. That year, according to Robin R. Means Coleman’s “African American Viewers and the Black Situation Comedy: Situating Racial Humor,” the N.A.A.C.P. put out a manifesto, in its bulletin, on “Why the ‘Amos ‘n’ Andy’ TV Show Should Be Taken Off the Air,” stating that the show “tends to strengthen the conclusion among uninformed and prejudiced people that Negroes are inferior, lazy, dumb, and dishonest,” and cataloging the show’s portrayals thusly: “Every character” is “either a clown or a crook”; “Negro doctors are shown as quacks and thieves”; “Negro lawyers are shown as slippery cowards”; “Negro women are shown as cackling, screaming shrews”; “All Negroes are shown as dodging work of any kind”; and “Millions of white Americans see this ‘Amos ‘n’ Andy’ picture of Negroes and think the entire race is the same.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9763898849487305}
The N.A.A.C.P. was right: “Amos ‘n’ Andy” disgracefully offered audiences a portrayal of Black Americans as impecunious dolts. And the N.A.A.C.P. was right to call this out. But from our perspective today, what notably appears to be missing from its indictment is any grievance that the show fails to call attention to the myriad injustices that Black people suffered historically and at the time. Listing its criticisms, the N.A.A.C.P. didn’t complain that “Amos ‘n’ Andy” ignored the reality of racism. Or that it did not, for instance, focus on characters being abused by police officers or finding themselves unable to secure housing outside of languishing Black neighborhoods. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.850064754486084}
This approach — emphasizing the demand for positive portrayals of Black life, rather than calling for more examination of Black struggles — was typical of how Black demands were couched back then. A few years later, an episode of the TV news show “See It Now,” hosted by Edward R. Murrow, spotlighted the Black operatic virtuoso Marian Anderson’s tour of Asia. The episode, which was broadcast in December 1957 and documented Anderson’s exceptional cultural diplomacy (the whole thing is worth watching), juxtaposed with events of the preceding September, when segregationists resisted the integration of Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., by Black students who became known as “The Little Rock Nine.” On her tour, Anderson was asked by interviewers about American race relations and she answered with statesmanlike aplomb — acknowledging that America was battling racism from within, while maintaining an optimism that we would move beyond it. Nevertheless, as Allan Keiler recounts in “Marian Anderson: A Singer’s Journey,” one viewer, presumably Black, wrote a letter complaining that the episode was still too pessimistic, neglecting greater mention of “the many of our race who are on top.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9919934272766113}
Back then, civil rights messaging, including Anderson’s, focused on how Black people were overcoming racism, not just on how it held us back. But that kind of message generated criticism of the sitcom “Julia” a decade later. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6873754858970642}
“Julia,” which ran for three seasons starting in 1968, was about a Black registered nurse, played by Diahann Carroll in her signature unflappable style. Her character was a professional woman, a single mom of an adorable son and the widow of a Vietnam War veteran, who negotiated a white world in which she occasionally encountered prejudice and dispatched it with crisp dismissal. (Though, it should be noted, many episodes dealt with other issues entirely.) To the N.A.A.C.P. of the late 1950s, “Julia” would’ve been just the ticket, portraying a financially independent, self-assured Black everywoman. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8848547339439392}
But as Donald Bogle documents in “Primetime Blues: African Americans on Network Television,” Carroll recalled that Harry Belafonte, the actor and civil rights activist, “launched a full-scale assault on ‘Julia,’ then asked me not to do it.” Bogle notes that Robert Lewis Shayon, a TV critic for The Saturday Review, wrote that the sitcom’s middle-class setting was “a far, far cry from the bitter realities of Negro life in the urban ghetto, the pit of America’s explosion potential.” After Carroll responded to Shayon’s criticism by noting that for many, watching TV can be a form of escapism at the end of a typical trying day, Shayon later wrote that the show: {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5314275026321411}
distorts reality and deals in double-truth. The business of TV comedy is not primarily to make people laugh: it is to manage consumption; and if in so doing it dulls critical sensibilities in people who have ‘had a pretty grim day,’ it contributes its share to the rigidity of a way of life in which black Americans suffer more severely than others. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7429941296577454}
Shayon was white and his take on a show about middle-class Black contentment was what we might now call woke, in some ways more intuitive to many than the N.A.A.C.P.’s response to “Amos ‘n’ Andy.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5220975279808044}
Which brings me to the way race is handled on the new HBO Max show, “The Gilded Age.” As Dave Itzkoff of The New York Times reports, the creator, Julian Fellowes (of “Downton Abbey” fame), considered having the show’s central Black female character, Peggy Scott, played by Denée Benton, be introduced to other characters as a maid. This would have been an honest depiction of some Black people’s station amid wealthy white New Yorkers in 1882, but an incomplete one. Benton requested that the creators consider a different conception of her character, and they did — Peggy starts out as the personal secretary to Agnes Van Rhijn, the society matron played by Christine Baranski. And as the show proceeds, we learn that for Peggy, an aspiring writer, a secretarial position is something of a step down, as she eschews the ready-made path that her parents want for her: taking over her father’s pharmacy and her prescribed place in Black society. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9913637638092041}
Miracle of miracles, “The Gilded Age” is portraying in living color (at least through the show’s most recently released episode) Brooklyn’s Black bourgeoisie of the era, and some of its history. That is, many Black New Yorkers, terrorized by the 1863 Draft Riots — which included the torching of a Black orphanage on Fifth Avenue — and by the generally oppressive conditions for Black people in an openly bigoted Manhattan, moved across the East River to Brooklyn, where a community of prosperous Black families took hold. Who knew that we would ever see, in high-def, this affluent Black Brooklyn, with characters played by actors as august as Audra McDonald and John Douglas Thompson? (Of note, also, is one of the show’s executive producers, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, known for her acting roles in movies such as “Antwone Fisher,” who directs four “Gilded Age” episodes this season.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9792248606681824}
The victory here is the kind that the critics of “Amos ‘n’ Andy” would have saluted, even if the critics of “Julia” might have been more skeptical. That is to say that “The Gilded Age,” at least so far, isn’t reckoning with the 19th-century Black New Yorkers who were making their way in the suffocatingly overcrowded Five Points neighborhood downtown (depicted memorably by Martin Scorsese in “Gangs of New York”). Or in cramped tenements in San Juan Hill on the Upper West Side, where “West Side Story” is set, a neighborhood later demolished to make way for Lincoln Center. In one scene, though, “Gilded Age” does nod to the racial stratification of the time, irrespective of class: As Peggy and her father stand on a sidewalk, white pedestrians pass, and she and her father know that they’re expected to stand aside and make way, and they do — their moneyed status and elegant bearing offering no exemption from being treated as second-class citizens. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9846370220184326}
I like this depiction of the era and have a hope: that we accept it, and others like it, as a win, rather than engaging in a dutiful exercise of contesting and finding fault with this show (and others) for not pointing its camera at Black misery. I’m heartened to see that, so far, articles in The Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times have all reported on this as a welcome development. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.6293722987174988}
However, it isn’t fanciful to imagine such an objection emerging, as the series goes forth, when you consider that for years there was debate about whether the “The Cosby Show,” with its upper-middle-class Brooklynite Black family, was a realistic portrayal of Black life in America. Or when “Our Kind of People: Inside America’s Black Upper Class” (the inspiration for last year’s eponymous Fox series) was published in 1999 and its author, Lawrence Otis Graham, found himself described as a guileless chronicler of the Black elite. Or when the general zeitgeist seems to teach us that resenting white power and privilege is more interesting than examining how some people get past them. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.4430880546569824}
But given that Black struggle is these days portrayed rather richly in film and theater, “The Gilded Age” lends a service in showing, beyond museum exhibits and magazine articles, that Black people in another age could triumph despite the obstacles. It brings onscreen life to one of many Black truths, and the one it has chosen to show is of a kind that a truly proud people must not be denied. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8172184228897095}

In 1951, the N.A.A.C.P. had clearly seen enough of the televised version of “Amos ‘n’ Andy” — the visual adaptation of the popular radio show that had white minstrels voicing supposed Black characters. That year, according to Robin R. Means Coleman’s “African American Viewers and the Black Situation Comedy: Situating Racial Humor,” the N.A.A.C.P. put out a manifesto, in its bulletin, on “Why the ‘Amos ‘n’ Andy’ TV Show Should Be Taken Off the Air,” stating that the show “tends to strengthen the conclusion among uninformed and prejudiced people that Negroes are inferior, lazy, dumb, and dishonest,” and cataloging the show’s portrayals thusly: “Every character” is “either a clown or a crook”; “Negro doctors are shown as quacks and thieves”; “Negro lawyers are shown as slippery cowards”; “Negro women are shown as cackling, screaming shrews”; “All Negroes are shown as dodging work of any kind”; and “Millions of white Americans see this ‘Amos ‘n’ Andy’ picture of Negroes and think the entire race is the same.” The N.A.A.C.P. was right: “Amos ‘n’ Andy” disgracefully offered audiences a portrayal of Black Americans as impecunious dolts. And the N.A.A.C.P. was right to call this out. But from our perspective today, what notably appears to be missing from its indictment is any grievance that the show fails to call attention to the myriad injustices that Black people suffered historically and at the time. Listing its criticisms, the N.A.A.C.P. didn’t complain that “Amos ‘n’ Andy” ignored the reality of racism. Or that it did not, for instance, focus on characters being abused by police officers or finding themselves unable to secure housing outside of languishing Black neighborhoods. This approach — emphasizing the demand for positive portrayals of Black life, rather than calling for more examination of Black struggles — was typical of how Black demands were couched back then. A few years later, an episode of the TV news show “See It Now,” hosted by Edward R. Murrow, spotlighted the Black operatic virtuoso Marian Anderson’s tour of Asia. The episode, which was broadcast in December 1957 and documented Anderson’s exceptional cultural diplomacy (the whole thing is worth watching), juxtaposed with events of the preceding September, when segregationists resisted the integration of Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., by Black students who became known as “The Little Rock Nine.” On her tour, Anderson was asked by interviewers about American race relations and she answered with statesmanlike aplomb — acknowledging that America was battling racism from within, while maintaining an optimism that we would move beyond it. Nevertheless, as Allan Keiler recounts in “Marian Anderson: A Singer’s Journey,” one viewer, presumably Black, wrote a letter complaining that the episode was still too pessimistic, neglecting greater mention of “the many of our race who are on top.” Back then, civil rights messaging, including Anderson’s, focused on how Black people were overcoming racism, not just on how it held us back. But that kind of message generated criticism of the sitcom “Julia” a decade later. “Julia,” which ran for three seasons starting in 1968, was about a Black registered nurse, played by Diahann Carroll in her signature unflappable style. Her character was a professional woman, a single mom of an adorable son and the widow of a Vietnam War veteran, who negotiated a white world in which she occasionally encountered prejudice and dispatched it with crisp dismissal. (Though, it should be noted, many episodes dealt with other issues entirely.) To the N.A.A.C.P. of the late 1950s, “Julia” would’ve been just the ticket, portraying a financially independent, self-assured Black everywoman. But as Donald Bogle documents in “Primetime Blues: African Americans on Network Television,” Carroll recalled that Harry Belafonte, the actor and civil rights activist, “launched a full-scale assault on ‘Julia,’ then asked me not to do it.” Bogle notes that Robert Lewis Shayon, a TV critic for The Saturday Review, wrote that the sitcom’s middle-class setting was “a far, far cry from the bitter realities of Negro life in the urban ghetto, the pit of America’s explosion potential.” After Carroll responded to Shayon’s criticism by noting that for many, watching TV can be a form of escapism at the end of a typical trying day, Shayon later wrote that the show: distorts reality and deals in double-truth. The business of TV comedy is not primarily to make people laugh: it is to manage consumption; and if in so doing it dulls critical sensibilities in people who have ‘had a pretty grim day,’ it contributes its share to the rigidity of a way of life in which black Americans suffer more severely than others. Shayon was white and his take on a show about middle-class Black contentment was what we might now call woke, in some ways more intuitive to many than the N.A.A.C.P.’s response to “Amos ‘n’ Andy.” Which brings me to the way race is handled on the new HBO Max show, “The Gilded Age.” As Dave Itzkoff of The New York Times reports, the creator, Julian Fellowes (of “Downton Abbey” fame), considered having the show’s central Black female character, Peggy Scott, played by Denée Benton, be introduced to other characters as a maid. This would have been an honest depiction of some Black people’s station amid wealthy white New Yorkers in 1882, but an incomplete one. Benton requested that the creators consider a different conception of her character, and they did — Peggy starts out as the personal secretary to Agnes Van Rhijn, the society matron played by Christine Baranski. And as the show proceeds, we learn that for Peggy, an aspiring writer, a secretarial position is something of a step down, as she eschews the ready-made path that her parents want for her: taking over her father’s pharmacy and her prescribed place in Black society. Miracle of miracles, “The Gilded Age” is portraying in living color (at least through the show’s most recently released episode) Brooklyn’s Black bourgeoisie of the era, and some of its history. That is, many Black New Yorkers, terrorized by the 1863 Draft Riots — which included the torching of a Black orphanage on Fifth Avenue — and by the generally oppressive conditions for Black people in an openly bigoted Manhattan, moved across the East River to Brooklyn, where a community of prosperous Black families took hold. Who knew that we would ever see, in high-def, this affluent Black Brooklyn, with characters played by actors as august as Audra McDonald and John Douglas Thompson? (Of note, also, is one of the show’s executive producers, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, known for her acting roles in movies such as “Antwone Fisher,” who directs four “Gilded Age” episodes this season.) The victory here is the kind that the critics of “Amos ‘n’ Andy” would have saluted, even if the critics of “Julia” might have been more skeptical. That is to say that “The Gilded Age,” at least so far, isn’t reckoning with the 19th-century Black New Yorkers who were making their way in the suffocatingly overcrowded Five Points neighborhood downtown (depicted memorably by Martin Scorsese in “Gangs of New York”). Or in cramped tenements in San Juan Hill on the Upper West Side, where “West Side Story” is set, a neighborhood later demolished to make way for Lincoln Center. In one scene, though, “Gilded Age” does nod to the racial stratification of the time, irrespective of class: As Peggy and her father stand on a sidewalk, white pedestrians pass, and she and her father know that they’re expected to stand aside and make way, and they do — their moneyed status and elegant bearing offering no exemption from being treated as second-class citizens. Evidence I like this depiction of the era and have a hope: that we accept it, and others like it, as a win, rather than engaging in a dutiful exercise of contesting and finding fault with this show (and others) for not pointing its camera at Black misery. I’m heartened to see that, so far, articles in The Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times have all reported on this as a welcome development. Concluding Statement However, it isn’t fanciful to imagine such an objection emerging, as the series goes forth, when you consider that for years there was debate about whether the “The Cosby Show,” with its upper-middle-class Brooklynite Black family, was a realistic portrayal of Black life in America. Or when “Our Kind of People: Inside America’s Black Upper Class” (the inspiration for last year’s eponymous Fox series) was published in 1999 and its author, Lawrence Otis Graham, found himself described as a guileless chronicler of the Black elite. Or when the general zeitgeist seems to teach us that resenting white power and privilege is more interesting than examining how some people get past them. But given that Black struggle is these days portrayed rather richly in film and theater, “The Gilded Age” lends a service in showing, beyond museum exhibits and magazine articles, that Black people in another age could triumph despite the obstacles. It brings onscreen life to one of many Black truths, and the one it has chosen to show is of a kind that a truly proud people must not be denied. Rebuttal

nytimes\things-to-do-this-weekend.txt

Using custom data configuration default-edd53864fa1a487b

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-edd53864fa1a487b\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-edd53864fa1a487b\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Something wonderful is in the air. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8931567072868347}
After so much worrying about dangerous pathogens floating among us, it’s refreshing to be diverted, however briefly, by what the New Victory Theater is unleashing into its atmosphere: feathers, balloons, umbrellas, flowing fabric, shiny particles and, especially, joy. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4816048741340637}
All have roles in “Air Play,” a mixture of circus, science, comedy and music to savor in person through March 6, or virtually through March 20. (Tickets are $20 to $45; on-demand online viewing is $25.) Presented by Seth Bloom and Christina Gelsone, the married duo known as Acrobuffos, this delightful hourlong revival — the show first ran here in 2018 — relies on its performers’ kinetic energy and Daniel Wurtzel’s air sculptures to keep both objects and spirits aloft. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9786136746406555}
What’s an air sculpture? It results from combining carefully positioned electric fans with materials that can soar. You’ll see silken swaths dance, balloons coyly sway, and orbs and glitter form a whirling, starry universe. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7168272733688354}
All the while, Bloom and Gelsone, expert clowns, play with each other, their props and their spectators, who shouldn’t expect to remain completely anchored themselves.LAUREL GRAEBER {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5026267766952515}
Betty White’s death at 99 on New Year’s Eve prompted not only national mourning, but also renewed nostalgia for “The Golden Girls,” the NBC sitcom White starred in that aired from 1985 to ’92. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6832160353660583}
That sentimentality could extend to “That Golden Girls Show!” as well. The puppet parody, which originally ran Off Broadway in 2016, is back on the road for what is billed as the “Final Farewell” tour. With Miranda Cooper as Sophia, Dylan Glick as Dorothy, Lu Zielinski as Blanche, and Samantha Lee Mason as Rose, the show reimagines classic moments from the sitcom in which Sophia schemes, Blanche flirts, Rose evokes St. Olaf and Dorothy flings lots of insults. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9707094430923462}
Recommended for ages 13 and older, “That Golden Girls Show!” is the first production to reopen Queens Theater. Performances are at 3 and 7 p.m. on Sunday, and tickets start at $20. If you miss the tour this time, it will circle back to the city with a four-week run at Theater Row beginning on April 29.SEAN L. McCARTHY {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9237058758735657}
“It’s my nature now, to record — to try to keep everything I’m passing through,” Jonas Mekas says in voice-over in “Lost Lost Lost.” First shown in 1976, this diary film is a compilation of footage Mekas shot from 1949 to 1963 capturing his life and friends in a changing New York, along with his feelings of displacement from his native Lithuania. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8893133401870728}
A writer, filmmaker, champion of the avant-garde and a founder of Anthology Film Archives, Mekas died at 96 in 2019; he would have turned 100 this year. A retrospective of his major cinematic works starts on Friday at Film at Lincoln Center and includes “Lost Lost Lost” (on Saturday and Wednesday). A related exhibition, “Jonas Mekas: The Camera Was Always Running,” opens the same day at the Jewish Museum, which is showing Mekas’s films in a prismatic, 12-screen installation format, and where Mekas ran a film series in the late 1960s. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8213942646980286}
On Sunday, Film at Lincoln Center will show Mekas’s nearly five-hour “As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty,” which stretches from 1970 to 1999. In his narration at the beginning, Mekas says he spliced together rolls of film “by chance, the way that I found them on the shelf.”BEN KENIGSBERG {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9818564057350159}
Last summer, the singer-songwriter and artist Moses Sumney held a concert in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It resulted in a 14-track album, “Live From Blackalachia,” and a 70-minute film that is simply titled “Blackalachia,” a portmanteau of “Black” and “Appalachia.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7734255790710449}
Sumney performed without an audience, unless you count the lush greenery that created the backdrop for his concert. At one point in the film, while lying in a tub full of flowers, Sumney says, “I’ve needed a space to articulate my own loneliness.” He does find some sense of connection in the Appalachian region, reinventing a place that bears few traces of the history of the Black people who once migrated through there. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9667948484420776}
“Blackalachia,” along with Sumney’s self-portraits, will be on view through March 5 at Nicola Vassell Gallery in Chelsea. The film will be screened six times a day during the gallery’s hours from Tuesday to Sunday. Details can be found at nicolavassell.com.MELISSA SMITH {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.953839898109436}
These have been a maddeningly tough two years for festival planners, but with Covid-19 cases on the decline and statewide restrictions lifted, the Hudson Jazz Festival’s organizers can count themselves among the lucky ones. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6145094037055969}
Two hours upriver from New York City, in an old opera house on the main drag of Hudson, N.Y., the festival culminates this weekend with nightly performances from some of straight-ahead jazz’s finest. The vibraphonist Warren Wolf will pay tribute on Friday night to Chick Corea and Gary Burton’s historic duets; the rising-star vocalist Jazzmeia Horn leads a quartet on Saturday; and the tenor saxophonist Jimmy Greene closes things out with a Sunday matinee. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9287277460098267}
For most of the weekend’s performances, tickets are still available for tables of two and four, and start at $70. Can’t make it in person? Each night’s program can be livestreamed free, if you reserve a space ahead of time, at hudsonhall.org.GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9185829758644104}

Something wonderful is in the air. Claim After so much worrying about dangerous pathogens floating among us, it’s refreshing to be diverted, however briefly, by what the New Victory Theater is unleashing into its atmosphere: feathers, balloons, umbrellas, flowing fabric, shiny particles and, especially, joy. All have roles in “Air Play,” a mixture of circus, science, comedy and music to savor in person through March 6, or virtually through March 20. (Tickets are $20 to $45; on-demand online viewing is $25.) Presented by Seth Bloom and Christina Gelsone, the married duo known as Acrobuffos, this delightful hourlong revival — the show first ran here in 2018 — relies on its performers’ kinetic energy and Daniel Wurtzel’s air sculptures to keep both objects and spirits aloft. What’s an air sculpture? It results from combining carefully positioned electric fans with materials that can soar. You’ll see silken swaths dance, balloons coyly sway, and orbs and glitter form a whirling, starry universe. All the while, Bloom and Gelsone, expert clowns, play with each other, their props and their spectators, who shouldn’t expect to remain completely anchored themselves.LAUREL GRAEBER Betty White’s death at 99 on New Year’s Eve prompted not only national mourning, but also renewed nostalgia for “The Golden Girls,” the NBC sitcom White starred in that aired from 1985 to ’92. That sentimentality could extend to “That Golden Girls Show!” as well. The puppet parody, which originally ran Off Broadway in 2016, is back on the road for what is billed as the “Final Farewell” tour. With Miranda Cooper as Sophia, Dylan Glick as Dorothy, Lu Zielinski as Blanche, and Samantha Lee Mason as Rose, the show reimagines classic moments from the sitcom in which Sophia schemes, Blanche flirts, Rose evokes St. Olaf and Dorothy flings lots of insults. Recommended for ages 13 and older, “That Golden Girls Show!” is the first production to reopen Queens Theater. Performances are at 3 and 7 p.m. on Sunday, and tickets start at $20. If you miss the tour this time, it will circle back to the city with a four-week run at Theater Row beginning on April 29.SEAN L. McCARTHY “It’s my nature now, to record — to try to keep everything I’m passing through,” Jonas Mekas says in voice-over in “Lost Lost Lost.” First shown in 1976, this diary film is a compilation of footage Mekas shot from 1949 to 1963 capturing his life and friends in a changing New York, along with his feelings of displacement from his native Lithuania. A writer, filmmaker, champion of the avant-garde and a founder of Anthology Film Archives, Mekas died at 96 in 2019; he would have turned 100 this year. A retrospective of his major cinematic works starts on Friday at Film at Lincoln Center and includes “Lost Lost Lost” (on Saturday and Wednesday). A related exhibition, “Jonas Mekas: The Camera Was Always Running,” opens the same day at the Jewish Museum, which is showing Mekas’s films in a prismatic, 12-screen installation format, and where Mekas ran a film series in the late 1960s. On Sunday, Film at Lincoln Center will show Mekas’s nearly five-hour “As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty,” which stretches from 1970 to 1999. In his narration at the beginning, Mekas says he spliced together rolls of film “by chance, the way that I found them on the shelf.”BEN KENIGSBERG Last summer, the singer-songwriter and artist Moses Sumney held a concert in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It resulted in a 14-track album, “Live From Blackalachia,” and a 70-minute film that is simply titled “Blackalachia,” a portmanteau of “Black” and “Appalachia.” Sumney performed without an audience, unless you count the lush greenery that created the backdrop for his concert. At one point in the film, while lying in a tub full of flowers, Sumney says, “I’ve needed a space to articulate my own loneliness.” He does find some sense of connection in the Appalachian region, reinventing a place that bears few traces of the history of the Black people who once migrated through there. “Blackalachia,” along with Sumney’s self-portraits, will be on view through March 5 at Nicola Vassell Gallery in Chelsea. The film will be screened six times a day during the gallery’s hours from Tuesday to Sunday. Details can be found at nicolavassell.com.MELISSA SMITH These have been a maddeningly tough two years for festival planners, but with Covid-19 cases on the decline and statewide restrictions lifted, the Hudson Jazz Festival’s organizers can count themselves among the lucky ones. Two hours upriver from New York City, in an old opera house on the main drag of Hudson, N.Y., the festival culminates this weekend with nightly performances from some of straight-ahead jazz’s finest. The vibraphonist Warren Wolf will pay tribute on Friday night to Chick Corea and Gary Burton’s historic duets; the rising-star vocalist Jazzmeia Horn leads a quartet on Saturday; and the tenor saxophonist Jimmy Greene closes things out with a Sunday matinee. For most of the weekend’s performances, tickets are still available for tables of two and four, and start at $70. Can’t make it in person? Each night’s program can be livestreamed free, if you reserve a space ahead of time, at hudsonhall.org.GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO Evidence

nytimes\tiktok-ava-majury.txt

Using custom data configuration default-4a0e65cd80ec98d4

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-4a0e65cd80ec98d4\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-4a0e65cd80ec98d4\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

NAPLES, Fla. — Ava Majury downloaded TikTok when she was 13, and at the height of the pandemic lockdowns a year later had more than a million followers. Her fans, nearly three-quarters of them male, watched her lip-sync and dance to trending music on an account with the profile message, “Hey, I love you!!” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5046791434288025}
In early 2020 Ava noticed that one fan, EricJustin111, was trying to get her attention in comments on TikTok. He messaged her in Snapchat and on Instagram, and turned up in online games she played with her brothers. Ava responded to him a few times at first, she said, “because I used to reply to my fans, like ‘Hey, how was your day?’’’ {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8405364751815796}
Early on July 10, the fan — Eric Rohan Justin, 18, of Ellicott City, Md. — arrived with a shotgun at the Majury family home in Naples and blew open the front door. His weapon jammed; Ava’s father, Rob Majury, a retired police lieutenant, chased him off but fell. Mr. Majury told Collier County sheriff’s officers that he returned to the house, retrieved his handgun and stood guard at the front door, only to see the gunman return a short time later. By sunrise Mr. Justin lay dying, shot by Mr. Majury. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9176673889160156}
What began as an enterprising teenager’s lockdown venture has awakened the family of five to how online fame can fuel real-world violence. In interviews with The New York Times, they spoke for the first time about an ordeal that illuminates the dark side of a social media platform favored by millions of children. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8737860918045044}
TikTok’s owner, Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd., and many of its users emphasize the friendships, innovative content and creative collaboration enabled by the platform, but its enormous popularity among vulnerable, underage people has also been linked to mental health problems, injuries and deaths. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6485052704811096}
Today Ava Majury remains on TikTok, where she is netting thousands of dollars in sponsorship deals and has attracted interest from Hollywood, including from reality TV producers. Her TikTok fame has brought sponsorship opportunities on Instagram and Snapchat, too. Instagram, owned by Meta, formerly known as Facebook, has also been accused of causing mental and emotional health problems among teenage female users. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9701479077339172}
“Her creations, her contacts, her videos became such a big part of her that to take it away would have been hard,” her father said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5188343524932861}
“We chose what’s best for our family,” Ava’s mother, Kim Majury, added. “We know there are going to be two sides, and some people won’t understand.’’ {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7738545536994934}
The Majurys moved to Florida in 2019 from Manalapan, N.J., lured by its warm climate, low taxes and a quieter lifestyle. They settled in Naples, a staid, safe community of affluent retirees and growing families in Collier County, on the state’s Gulf Coast. Mr. Majury, 51, is a former Jersey City police lieutenant, and Mrs. Majury, 45, is an ultrasound technologist. The family rented a home in Raffia Preserve, a subdivision of tidy homes on curving streets. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9494966268539429}
Ava is “a go-getter,” her father said. When classmates in New Jersey admired a sticker she had designed for her laptop, she started selling them, eventually earning nearly $700. On TikTok, she has promoted a tooth-whitening product, emerging recording artists and N.F.L. games. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9672093987464905}
“I have three TikTok accounts, so I could have one brand come to me and be like, ‘Oh, I’ll do $1,000 for one video on your main account,’ and I’ll be like, ‘Oh great, I have two other accounts that are different types of people on there,’” Ava said in an interview. “So altogether, I’m making $1,700 off just my name, because I opened up three accounts rather than just building off one.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9518561363220215}
Her venture surprised and intrigued her parents. “Honestly, we had no idea the extent of what she was able to earn,” Mr. Majury said. He has appeared in a couple of her videos, including one she made in the car while he was driving. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8914451003074646}
“We both pointed at the camera at the same time and the music stopped and she starts laughing. You know, so innocent, it was sweet for me. It’s me and her having a moment,” Mr. Majury recalled. The moment drew hundreds of thousands of views. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9306972622871399}
Downloads of TikTok grew by 75 percent in 2020, making it the world’s most-downloaded app that year, according to Hootsuite. Today the platform has more than one billion average monthly users. It welcomes account holders as young as 13, and in 2021 outflanked both Instagram and Snapchat in weekly usage by youth ages 12 to 17. While teens like Ava have used it to entertain and spread positive messages, viral “TikTok Challenges” have been cited as inspiring children to vandalize and threaten their schools, follow starvation “Corpse Bride” diets and asphyxiate themselves. Teen girls have been repeatedly targeted by child predators.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9689937829971313}
A TikTok spokeswoman, Mahsau Cullinane, emailed a statement saying that TikTok is “deeply invested in the safety and well-being of our community’’ and added that the platform uses tools to protect users under the age of 16. In 2020, TikTok classified more than a third of its 49 million daily users in the United States as 14 or younger, according to internal company data and documents reviewed by The Times. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9897127151489258}
Ava has two brothers, Evan and Logan, ages 17 and 11. She and Evan attend a sprawling public high school where much of student life revolves around social media.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.621408224105835}
In early 2020, after Ava noticed Mr. Justin angling for her attention on TikTok, she learned that friends in New Jersey and Florida were selling him photos of her as well as her personal information, including her cellphone number, which Mr. Justin used to call and text her. In another instance, Mr. Justin logged onto a classmate’s school account and did math homework in exchange for information about Ava, her family said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9918085932731628}
“I had to unfollow all my local friends and Jersey friends,” Ava said. “And everyone around me was like, ‘Oh you’re going Hollywood on all of us, you don’t want to talk to us anymore.’ And I’m like, ‘You’re selling my stuff.’” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9179037809371948}
But Ava’s parents allowed her to sell Mr. Justin a couple of selfies that she had already posted to Snapchat. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8064393401145935}
“I wasn’t sending anything of my body,’’ Ava said. “It was just pictures of my face, which is what I assume that he was paying for. My whole thing is my pretty smile — that’s my content.” She said Mr. Justin paid about $300 for two photos, via the Venmo digital wallet app. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9615670442581177}
After that, Mr. Justin messaged Ava on Venmo with a breakdown of what he would pay for “booty pics” and photos of her feet, “stuff that a 14-year-old shouldn’t be sending,” she said. She blocked him on all her accounts. In Venmo messages viewed by The Times, Mr. Justin pleaded with her to unblock him, sending $159.18, then $100, and finally $368.50 with the message, “sorry this is all I have left i’m broke.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.97735995054245}
Mr. Majury said he texted Mr. Justin’s cellphone, told him that Ava was a minor, and demanded that he stop contacting her. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.83146071434021}
At that point Mr. Justin’s efforts turned sinister. In a series of text messages that made their way to Ava, and which the Majury family showed The Times, he asked one of Ava’s male classmates whether he had access to a “strap,” or gun, shared plans to assault her, and wrote, “i could just breach the door with a shotgun i think.” The classmate’s mother declined an interview request. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9619759321212769}
When Ava learned of the threatening messages, she called the classmate who had received them. He confirmed that he had gotten them, and forwarded others to her. Fearful, she showed her parents. They researched Mr. Justin’s identity, saw that he lived hundreds of miles away, and reassured her that “he was one of these keyboard cowboys,” Mr. Majury said.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9830088019371033}
“I sort of discredited what could have been a threat.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3635293245315552}
Ava’s bedroom was just inside the door Mr. Justin blasted open. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3745521605014801}
“All I remember was, I heard it, I felt it in my chest, and I looked up, and there was a hole in my door from the fragments,” she said. She ran through a connecting bathroom to her brothers’ room, clutching a blanket, water bottle and her cellphone. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.4728926718235016}
Mr. Majury bolted from bed and ran shouting to the foyer, where he said debris still floated in the air. Mrs. Majury followed, dialing 911 on her phone. Outside a gangly teenager wearing what looked like a blue Walmart worker’s vest, protective earplugs and safety glasses stood on the front lawn. He turned to escape and Mr. Majury sprinted forward but fell, gashing his knee. The gunman paused, struggling to clear his jammed weapon, then ran away. Mr. Majury retrieved his handgun, and was standing at the front door awaiting the police when Mr. Justin returned. Mr. Majury said he ordered the teenager to drop the shotgun, and when he instead pointed it at him, Mr. Majury fired. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.7182294726371765}
The three Majury children had retreated to their parents’ bedroom in the rear of the house. Ava’s older brother, Evan, turned to her in panic and fury. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8115282654762268}
“This is all your fault,” he said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.32932931184768677}
“The subject was most likely a stalker that resulted from her daughter’s extensive social media involvement,” the Collier County Sheriff’s Office report read, citing statements to them from Mrs. Majury. “Since her daughter’s involvement with social media, multiple subjects have attempted to ascertain her family’s address in the past.” Mrs. Majury provided them with contact information for Mr. Justin, the report said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9875248670578003}
The Collier County Sheriff’s Office told local media at the time that a man had been shot and killed by the resident of a home in Raffia Preserve after firing a gun into the home, in an attempted home invasion robbery. The office did not name the gunman. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9367177486419678}
The Majurys said police told them that Mr. Justin was carrying two cellphones that contained thousands of photographs of Ava and hundreds of hours of her videos. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7559820413589478}
Collier County Sheriff Kevin Rambosk and investigators from his office did not respond to requests for interviews. “This remains an active investigation and there are no updates,” Karie Partington, a sheriff’s office spokeswoman, said in an email. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9528407454490662}
The gunman’s identity was confirmed by his father, Justin Dominic. Mr. Dominic, a software engineer who is divorced from Mr. Justin’s mother, said that before the divorce the family had lived in the United States and then had moved to Mr. Dominic’s native India. When his parents split up, Mr. Justin chose to move back to the U.S. with his mother, his father said, recalling their move as around 2015. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9885028004646301}
Mr. Dominic, who said he had spoken with investigators, recalled his son as a good student who did well in math at Mount Hebron High School in Ellicott City. “He was a nice kid. I’m at a loss for words,” he said in an interview. “I don’t know what went bad with him. He made a bad choice.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.957148015499115}
After the shooting the Majurys, reeling, moved in with friends. A few days later Mrs. Majury received an invitation from a would-be agent for Ava to visit Los Angeles, meet other influencers, and attend a couple of red carpet events. One was for “Glo-Up Girls,” a line of makeover-ready dolls advertised on a YouTube channel featuring six teenage influencers “living in a mansion and taking on sensational Glo-Up challenges.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9865795969963074}
“It was a nice distraction, absolutely,” Mrs. Majury said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4393313229084015}
After the Majurys returned home, their homeowners’ association sent a letter to their landlord demanding their eviction because, among other reasons, Ava’s social media venture had attracted an intruder to the property. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6437933444976807}
In early August, Ava received messages on Venmo from a man calling her “baby girl,” offering to pay $1,000 a month for her phone number. Her parents discovered that the man’s name matches that of a registered sex offender, arrested previously for soliciting a 14-year-old girl. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8258489966392517}
Mrs. Majury remembers thinking, “We can’t live like this.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.42415931820869446}
Mr. Majury said he was advised by the police that under Florida’s “stand your ground” law governing justifiable use of deadly force, he was not subject to prosecution. But just to be safe, he contacted a lawyer, James Scarmozzino, to represent him. Mr. Scarmozzino connected the family to other lawyers who organized a business centered on Ava’s potential earnings. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9865441918373108}
Michael Marino, an entertainment lawyer in New York, created an enterprise, AGM Creations, for Ava, and signed an agreement with the Majurys for a percentage of future revenues. Mr. Marino turned to a friend, Lanny Davis, a Washington lawyer and crisis manager whose public relations firm is now representing Ava. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9457055926322937}
The shooting continues to reverberate. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8721329569816589}
The boy who received Mr. Justin’s messages about his plans to attack Ava still attends high school with her. In December, Ava told her parents that he was following and watching her. The family visited the high school to report the matter. Last month, another classmate sent her a video the boy had made of himself firing a gun at a shooting range, her mother said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9906085729598999}
Unnerved, Ava withdrew from school this month and now attends class from home. Mr. Scarmozzino filed a petition in Collier County Circuit Court seeking an injunction for protection against stalking. A hearing is set for Feb. 28, and Ava will testify. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9043494462966919}
Ava is still on social media, with her parents’ support. Mrs. Majury said she did not want “sick individuals” to force Ava off the platforms. “Why should we allow them to stop her? Maybe she’s meant to bring awareness to all this,” Mrs. Majury said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9525130391120911}
Ava has not told her followers what happened. “I don’t want it to go out negatively and people think I attracted him,” she said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.559304416179657}
Her greater worry is that other troubled people will “make it a contest to see who can get here first,’’ and she acknowledged that sometimes at night, trying to fall asleep after the shooting, “I’d think, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’” But by morning, “I thought of all the benefits.’’ {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7587109804153442}
“Most people would say the money. And yeah, it’s a huge benefit. But it’s the experience. I got to go to L.A., the people that I met,” she said. “Just being able to make other people smile is what I like, the enjoyment of seeing the impact I made on some people’s lives. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8096725344657898}
“I’d post a video at night, close my eyes, and in the morning it was exciting to see how many views I got.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6909950375556946}
Her father interjected: “It’s like Christmas every day, because then you see it build.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5007434487342834}
“I think we just had to allow her to make a decision and sort of support her. I think it’s going to help her heal. It sounds corny, but I don’t know what else you would do it for.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4614502489566803}

NAPLES, Fla. — Ava Majury downloaded TikTok when she was 13, and at the height of the pandemic lockdowns a year later had more than a million followers. Her fans, nearly three-quarters of them male, watched her lip-sync and dance to trending music on an account with the profile message, “Hey, I love you!!” In early 2020 Ava noticed that one fan, EricJustin111, was trying to get her attention in comments on TikTok. He messaged her in Snapchat and on Instagram, and turned up in online games she played with her brothers. Ava responded to him a few times at first, she said, “because I used to reply to my fans, like ‘Hey, how was your day?’’’ Early on July 10, the fan — Eric Rohan Justin, 18, of Ellicott City, Md. — arrived with a shotgun at the Majury family home in Naples and blew open the front door. His weapon jammed; Ava’s father, Rob Majury, a retired police lieutenant, chased him off but fell. Mr. Majury told Collier County sheriff’s officers that he returned to the house, retrieved his handgun and stood guard at the front door, only to see the gunman return a short time later. By sunrise Mr. Justin lay dying, shot by Mr. Majury. What began as an enterprising teenager’s lockdown venture has awakened the family of five to how online fame can fuel real-world violence. In interviews with The New York Times, they spoke for the first time about an ordeal that illuminates the dark side of a social media platform favored by millions of children. TikTok’s owner, Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd., and many of its users emphasize the friendships, innovative content and creative collaboration enabled by the platform, but its enormous popularity among vulnerable, underage people has also been linked to mental health problems, injuries and deaths. Today Ava Majury remains on TikTok, where she is netting thousands of dollars in sponsorship deals and has attracted interest from Hollywood, including from reality TV producers. Her TikTok fame has brought sponsorship opportunities on Instagram and Snapchat, too. Instagram, owned by Meta, formerly known as Facebook, has also been accused of causing mental and emotional health problems among teenage female users. “Her creations, her contacts, her videos became such a big part of her that to take it away would have been hard,” her father said. “We chose what’s best for our family,” Ava’s mother, Kim Majury, added. “We know there are going to be two sides, and some people won’t understand.’’ The Majurys moved to Florida in 2019 from Manalapan, N.J., lured by its warm climate, low taxes and a quieter lifestyle. They settled in Naples, a staid, safe community of affluent retirees and growing families in Collier County, on the state’s Gulf Coast. Mr. Majury, 51, is a former Jersey City police lieutenant, and Mrs. Majury, 45, is an ultrasound technologist. The family rented a home in Raffia Preserve, a subdivision of tidy homes on curving streets. Ava is “a go-getter,” her father said. When classmates in New Jersey admired a sticker she had designed for her laptop, she started selling them, eventually earning nearly $700. On TikTok, she has promoted a tooth-whitening product, emerging recording artists and N.F.L. games. “I have three TikTok accounts, so I could have one brand come to me and be like, ‘Oh, I’ll do $1,000 for one video on your main account,’ and I’ll be like, ‘Oh great, I have two other accounts that are different types of people on there,’” Ava said in an interview. “So altogether, I’m making $1,700 off just my name, because I opened up three accounts rather than just building off one.” Her venture surprised and intrigued her parents. “Honestly, we had no idea the extent of what she was able to earn,” Mr. Majury said. He has appeared in a couple of her videos, including one she made in the car while he was driving. “We both pointed at the camera at the same time and the music stopped and she starts laughing. You know, so innocent, it was sweet for me. It’s me and her having a moment,” Mr. Majury recalled. The moment drew hundreds of thousands of views. Downloads of TikTok grew by 75 percent in 2020, making it the world’s most-downloaded app that year, according to Hootsuite. Today the platform has more than one billion average monthly users. It welcomes account holders as young as 13, and in 2021 outflanked both Instagram and Snapchat in weekly usage by youth ages 12 to 17. While teens like Ava have used it to entertain and spread positive messages, viral “TikTok Challenges” have been cited as inspiring children to vandalize and threaten their schools, follow starvation “Corpse Bride” diets and asphyxiate themselves. Teen girls have been repeatedly targeted by child predators. A TikTok spokeswoman, Mahsau Cullinane, emailed a statement saying that TikTok is “deeply invested in the safety and well-being of our community’’ and added that the platform uses tools to protect users under the age of 16. In 2020, TikTok classified more than a third of its 49 million daily users in the United States as 14 or younger, according to internal company data and documents reviewed by The Times. Ava has two brothers, Evan and Logan, ages 17 and 11. She and Evan attend a sprawling public high school where much of student life revolves around social media. In early 2020, after Ava noticed Mr. Justin angling for her attention on TikTok, she learned that friends in New Jersey and Florida were selling him photos of her as well as her personal information, including her cellphone number, which Mr. Justin used to call and text her. In another instance, Mr. Justin logged onto a classmate’s school account and did math homework in exchange for information about Ava, her family said. “I had to unfollow all my local friends and Jersey friends,” Ava said. “And everyone around me was like, ‘Oh you’re going Hollywood on all of us, you don’t want to talk to us anymore.’ And I’m like, ‘You’re selling my stuff.’” Evidence But Ava’s parents allowed her to sell Mr. Justin a couple of selfies that she had already posted to Snapchat. Rebuttal “I wasn’t sending anything of my body,’’ Ava said. “It was just pictures of my face, which is what I assume that he was paying for. My whole thing is my pretty smile — that’s my content.” She said Mr. Justin paid about $300 for two photos, via the Venmo digital wallet app. After that, Mr. Justin messaged Ava on Venmo with a breakdown of what he would pay for “booty pics” and photos of her feet, “stuff that a 14-year-old shouldn’t be sending,” she said. She blocked him on all her accounts. In Venmo messages viewed by The Times, Mr. Justin pleaded with her to unblock him, sending $159.18, then $100, and finally $368.50 with the message, “sorry this is all I have left i’m broke.” Mr. Majury said he texted Mr. Justin’s cellphone, told him that Ava was a minor, and demanded that he stop contacting her. At that point Mr. Justin’s efforts turned sinister. In a series of text messages that made their way to Ava, and which the Majury family showed The Times, he asked one of Ava’s male classmates whether he had access to a “strap,” or gun, shared plans to assault her, and wrote, “i could just breach the door with a shotgun i think.” The classmate’s mother declined an interview request. When Ava learned of the threatening messages, she called the classmate who had received them. He confirmed that he had gotten them, and forwarded others to her. Fearful, she showed her parents. They researched Mr. Justin’s identity, saw that he lived hundreds of miles away, and reassured her that “he was one of these keyboard cowboys,” Mr. Majury said. Evidence “I sort of discredited what could have been a threat.” Ava’s bedroom was just inside the door Mr. Justin blasted open. Claim “All I remember was, I heard it, I felt it in my chest, and I looked up, and there was a hole in my door from the fragments,” she said. She ran through a connecting bathroom to her brothers’ room, clutching a blanket, water bottle and her cellphone. Mr. Majury bolted from bed and ran shouting to the foyer, where he said debris still floated in the air. Mrs. Majury followed, dialing 911 on her phone. Outside a gangly teenager wearing what looked like a blue Walmart worker’s vest, protective earplugs and safety glasses stood on the front lawn. He turned to escape and Mr. Majury sprinted forward but fell, gashing his knee. The gunman paused, struggling to clear his jammed weapon, then ran away. Mr. Majury retrieved his handgun, and was standing at the front door awaiting the police when Mr. Justin returned. Mr. Majury said he ordered the teenager to drop the shotgun, and when he instead pointed it at him, Mr. Majury fired. Lead The three Majury children had retreated to their parents’ bedroom in the rear of the house. Ava’s older brother, Evan, turned to her in panic and fury. Evidence “This is all your fault,” he said. Claim “The subject was most likely a stalker that resulted from her daughter’s extensive social media involvement,” the Collier County Sheriff’s Office report read, citing statements to them from Mrs. Majury. “Since her daughter’s involvement with social media, multiple subjects have attempted to ascertain her family’s address in the past.” Mrs. Majury provided them with contact information for Mr. Justin, the report said. The Collier County Sheriff’s Office told local media at the time that a man had been shot and killed by the resident of a home in Raffia Preserve after firing a gun into the home, in an attempted home invasion robbery. The office did not name the gunman. The Majurys said police told them that Mr. Justin was carrying two cellphones that contained thousands of photographs of Ava and hundreds of hours of her videos. Collier County Sheriff Kevin Rambosk and investigators from his office did not respond to requests for interviews. “This remains an active investigation and there are no updates,” Karie Partington, a sheriff’s office spokeswoman, said in an email. The gunman’s identity was confirmed by his father, Justin Dominic. Mr. Dominic, a software engineer who is divorced from Mr. Justin’s mother, said that before the divorce the family had lived in the United States and then had moved to Mr. Dominic’s native India. When his parents split up, Mr. Justin chose to move back to the U.S. with his mother, his father said, recalling their move as around 2015. Mr. Dominic, who said he had spoken with investigators, recalled his son as a good student who did well in math at Mount Hebron High School in Ellicott City. “He was a nice kid. I’m at a loss for words,” he said in an interview. “I don’t know what went bad with him. He made a bad choice.” After the shooting the Majurys, reeling, moved in with friends. A few days later Mrs. Majury received an invitation from a would-be agent for Ava to visit Los Angeles, meet other influencers, and attend a couple of red carpet events. One was for “Glo-Up Girls,” a line of makeover-ready dolls advertised on a YouTube channel featuring six teenage influencers “living in a mansion and taking on sensational Glo-Up challenges.” Evidence “It was a nice distraction, absolutely,” Mrs. Majury said. Claim After the Majurys returned home, their homeowners’ association sent a letter to their landlord demanding their eviction because, among other reasons, Ava’s social media venture had attracted an intruder to the property. In early August, Ava received messages on Venmo from a man calling her “baby girl,” offering to pay $1,000 a month for her phone number. Her parents discovered that the man’s name matches that of a registered sex offender, arrested previously for soliciting a 14-year-old girl. Evidence Mrs. Majury remembers thinking, “We can’t live like this.” Claim Mr. Majury said he was advised by the police that under Florida’s “stand your ground” law governing justifiable use of deadly force, he was not subject to prosecution. But just to be safe, he contacted a lawyer, James Scarmozzino, to represent him. Mr. Scarmozzino connected the family to other lawyers who organized a business centered on Ava’s potential earnings. Michael Marino, an entertainment lawyer in New York, created an enterprise, AGM Creations, for Ava, and signed an agreement with the Majurys for a percentage of future revenues. Mr. Marino turned to a friend, Lanny Davis, a Washington lawyer and crisis manager whose public relations firm is now representing Ava. Evidence The shooting continues to reverberate. Claim The boy who received Mr. Justin’s messages about his plans to attack Ava still attends high school with her. In December, Ava told her parents that he was following and watching her. The family visited the high school to report the matter. Last month, another classmate sent her a video the boy had made of himself firing a gun at a shooting range, her mother said. Unnerved, Ava withdrew from school this month and now attends class from home. Mr. Scarmozzino filed a petition in Collier County Circuit Court seeking an injunction for protection against stalking. A hearing is set for Feb. 28, and Ava will testify. Ava is still on social media, with her parents’ support. Mrs. Majury said she did not want “sick individuals” to force Ava off the platforms. “Why should we allow them to stop her? Maybe she’s meant to bring awareness to all this,” Mrs. Majury said. Ava has not told her followers what happened. “I don’t want it to go out negatively and people think I attracted him,” she said. Her greater worry is that other troubled people will “make it a contest to see who can get here first,’’ and she acknowledged that sometimes at night, trying to fall asleep after the shooting, “I’d think, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’” But by morning, “I thought of all the benefits.’’ “Most people would say the money. And yeah, it’s a huge benefit. But it’s the experience. I got to go to L.A., the people that I met,” she said. “Just being able to make other people smile is what I like, the enjoyment of seeing the impact I made on some people’s lives. “I’d post a video at night, close my eyes, and in the morning it was exciting to see how many views I got.” Her father interjected: “It’s like Christmas every day, because then you see it build.” “I think we just had to allow her to make a decision and sort of support her. I think it’s going to help her heal. It sounds corny, but I don’t know what else you would do it for.” Evidence

nytimes\trevor-noah-russia-ukraine.txt

Using custom data configuration default-aa159081e7320b1a

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-aa159081e7320b1a\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-aa159081e7320b1a\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.5074763298034668}
Russia continued to threaten to invade Ukraine on Thursday despite claims that its forces would be pulling back from the border. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4926464855670929}
“I’m not going to lie, guys: It wouldn’t be a surprise if Russia was being sneaky,” Trevor Noah said. “I mean, this is the same country that hides dolls inside bigger dolls. Do you know how sick you have to be to do that?” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4731714725494385}
“But America is certain — they’re certain — that Russia is still planning to invade. In fact, today the U.S. Secretary of State even said what Russia might do to justify an invasion is launch fake or even real chemical weapons at themselves and then blame it on Ukraine. Yeah, yeah, first of all, uh, spoilers, hello!” — TREVOR NOAH {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.5663161873817444}
“Secondly, can you imagine that, staging a chemical attack on yourself to justify your invasion? That’s pretty messed up, especially for the Russian soldiers who have to carry out the mission: [imitating Russian soldier] ‘So we launch this on ourselves but this is fake, yes?’ [imitating another Russian soldier] ‘Yeah, we will find out when bomb explodes. Mystery, excitement.’” — TREVOR NOAH {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9307666420936584}
“And you know, people, as erratic as the Russians’ actions might seem, you understand what they’re doing right now, right? They’re playing chess. This is literally what chess is all about: [imitating chess player] ‘Oh, I’m moving forward. I’m moving backwards. I’m attacking. No, I’m not. The horse is going this way, then it turns.’ This is what Russia is doing — and the Russians love playing chess. They’ve been designed for this moment. Meanwhile, the rest of us, we don’t play chess anymore. We love dumb games now. We’re like, ‘Uh, I need a five-letter word that ends in d-e. Plate? No.’” — TREVOR NOAH {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9476456642150879}
“Lindell has a plan to support the Canadian truckers, and you’ll never guess what it is — send them a bunch of MyPillows.” — STEPHEN COLBERT, on MyPillow C.E.O. Mike Lindell {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6081123948097229}
“Lindell loaded up a truck with 10,000 pillows — almost as many as on the bed in your great-aunt’s guest room.” — STEPHEN COLBERT {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7398226857185364}
“Who would’ve ever guessed his voter fraud crusade would wind up being the second-craziest thing he’s done?” — JIMMY KIMMEL {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4448431730270386}
“Mike told The Daily Beast his backup plan was to fly a helicopter over the border and drop the pillows from the sky. Then he claimed he was trolling the reporter. But at this point, how would we have any way of knowing when you’re joking or not?” — JIMMY KIMMEL {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9334002733230591}
“OK, so the Canadian border guards are stopping him from driving into the country, so he’s playing it safe by using a helicopter to violate their airspace. Good thing he’s got those 10,000 pillows — they can cushion the fall when the Canadian air force shoots his [expletive] down.” — STEPHEN COLBERT {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9295510649681091}
“And another question, why are you sending pillows to Canada? They have pillows. I think that’s where Canadian geese come from, Canada.” — JIMMY KIMMEL {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6899133920669556}
Jordan Klepper went straight to the source and talked with Canadian truckers protesting the Covid-19 vaccine mandate on Thursday’s “Daily Show.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8145843148231506}
Jason Zinoman investigates the long, rich Jewish tradition of grappling with antisemitism by laughing at it. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6796911954879761}

Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now. Concluding Statement Russia continued to threaten to invade Ukraine on Thursday despite claims that its forces would be pulling back from the border. “I’m not going to lie, guys: It wouldn’t be a surprise if Russia was being sneaky,” Trevor Noah said. “I mean, this is the same country that hides dolls inside bigger dolls. Do you know how sick you have to be to do that?” Evidence “But America is certain — they’re certain — that Russia is still planning to invade. In fact, today the U.S. Secretary of State even said what Russia might do to justify an invasion is launch fake or even real chemical weapons at themselves and then blame it on Ukraine. Yeah, yeah, first of all, uh, spoilers, hello!” — TREVOR NOAH Rebuttal “Secondly, can you imagine that, staging a chemical attack on yourself to justify your invasion? That’s pretty messed up, especially for the Russian soldiers who have to carry out the mission: [imitating Russian soldier] ‘So we launch this on ourselves but this is fake, yes?’ [imitating another Russian soldier] ‘Yeah, we will find out when bomb explodes. Mystery, excitement.’” — TREVOR NOAH “And you know, people, as erratic as the Russians’ actions might seem, you understand what they’re doing right now, right? They’re playing chess. This is literally what chess is all about: [imitating chess player] ‘Oh, I’m moving forward. I’m moving backwards. I’m attacking. No, I’m not. The horse is going this way, then it turns.’ This is what Russia is doing — and the Russians love playing chess. They’ve been designed for this moment. Meanwhile, the rest of us, we don’t play chess anymore. We love dumb games now. We’re like, ‘Uh, I need a five-letter word that ends in d-e. Plate? No.’” — TREVOR NOAH “Lindell has a plan to support the Canadian truckers, and you’ll never guess what it is — send them a bunch of MyPillows.” — STEPHEN COLBERT, on MyPillow C.E.O. Mike Lindell “Lindell loaded up a truck with 10,000 pillows — almost as many as on the bed in your great-aunt’s guest room.” — STEPHEN COLBERT Evidence “Who would’ve ever guessed his voter fraud crusade would wind up being the second-craziest thing he’s done?” — JIMMY KIMMEL Claim “Mike told The Daily Beast his backup plan was to fly a helicopter over the border and drop the pillows from the sky. Then he claimed he was trolling the reporter. But at this point, how would we have any way of knowing when you’re joking or not?” — JIMMY KIMMEL “OK, so the Canadian border guards are stopping him from driving into the country, so he’s playing it safe by using a helicopter to violate their airspace. Good thing he’s got those 10,000 pillows — they can cushion the fall when the Canadian air force shoots his [expletive] down.” — STEPHEN COLBERT “And another question, why are you sending pillows to Canada? They have pillows. I think that’s where Canadian geese come from, Canada.” — JIMMY KIMMEL Jordan Klepper went straight to the source and talked with Canadian truckers protesting the Covid-19 vaccine mandate on Thursday’s “Daily Show.” Evidence Jason Zinoman investigates the long, rich Jewish tradition of grappling with antisemitism by laughing at it. Claim

nytimes\trump-archives-white-house.txt

Using custom data configuration default-db2e298af817f8b2

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-db2e298af817f8b2\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-db2e298af817f8b2\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

WASHINGTON — The National Archives confirmed on Friday that it had found classified information among material that President Donald J. Trump had taken with him to his home in Florida when he left office last year and that it had consulted with the Justice Department about the matter. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8462391495704651}
The agency “has identified items marked as classified national security information within the boxes,” according to a letter posted on the National Archives and Record Administration’s website. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4724111258983612}
Last month, the archives retrieved 15 boxes that Mr. Trump took with him to his Mar-a-Lago home from the White House residence when his term ended. The boxes included material subject to the Presidential Records Act, which requires that all documents and records pertaining to official business be turned over to the archives. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9682769179344177}
The items in the boxes included documents, mementos, gifts and letters. The archives did not describe the classified material it found other than to say that it was “classified national security information.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9551999568939209}
Because the National Archives “identified classified information in the boxes,” the agency “has been in communication with the Department of Justice,” said the letter, written by David S. Ferriero, the national archivist, and sent to Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York and the chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee, who has been scrutinizing how Mr. Trump handled presidential records. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9630406498908997}
Mr. Trump made attacking Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of national security materials a centerpiece of his 2016 presidential campaign. The latest revelations about Mr. Trump’s own laxity with classified information and his haphazard adherence to federal record-keeping laws have drawn cries of hypocrisy from Democrats. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.973197340965271}
Asked how Republicans would square Mr. Trump’s criticism of Ms. Clinton with his own record, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, which at one point approved a resolution condemning Ms. Clinton for using a private email server while she was secretary of state, did not respond. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8212285041809082}
The New York Times reported last week that among the documents that were sent back to the National Archives were some that archivists believed were classified, and that the agency had consulted with the Justice Department about the discovery. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6593209505081177}
It is not clear what steps, if any, the Justice Department is taking to address the matter. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6867125034332275}
Mr. Ferriero’s letter came on the same day that a federal judge rejected Mr. Trump’s request to dismiss three civil suits seeking to hold him to account for his role in the attack on the Capitol last year. And it came a day after a judge in New York ruled that the former president had to answer questions from state investigators examining his company, the Trump Organization, for evidence of fraud. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9803643226623535}
In the past two weeks, a series of disclosures has raised new questions about the Trump administration’s failure to follow federal record-keeping laws and its handling of classified information as Mr. Trump left office. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.43122583627700806}
Focusing attention on a new element of the issue, the National Archives said in its letter on Friday that the Trump White House had failed to turn over records that included “certain social media records.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5073550343513489}
The Trump White House, the archives said, failed to take “any steps to capture deleted content from any Trump Administration social media account other than @realDonaldTrump or @POTUS.” The accounts in question included those for aides such as Andrew Giuliani, Chad Gilmartin, Ivanka Trump, Kayleigh McEnany, Kellyanne Conway, Mark Meadows and Peter Navarro that the archives said contained presidential records. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9761221408843994}
The archives also has not been able to locate any of the Snapchat messages sent by the Trump White House. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8386943340301514}
Mr. Ferriero also wrote that “some White House staff conducted official business using nonofficial electronic messaging accounts that were not copied or forwarded into their official electronic messaging accounts.” The archives said it was in the process of obtaining some of those records. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.901106059551239}
Among those staff members was Mr. Meadows, Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff, who recently turned over hundreds of pages of documents to the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, some of which came from his personal cellphone. The committee said it had questions about why Mr. Meadows had used a personal cellphone, a Signal account and two personal Gmail accounts to conduct official business, and whether he had properly turned over all of the relevant records from those accounts to the National Archives. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9874076843261719}
Mr. Ferriero made clear in his letter that the archives had been concerned for several years about Mr. Trump’s failure to follow the record-keeping law. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.48211732506752014}
In June 2018, the archives “learned from an article in Politico that textual presidential records were being torn up by former President Trump and that White House staff were attempting to tape them back together,” the letter said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7288867235183716}
The letter added, referring to the National Archives and Records Administration: “The White House Counsel’s Office indicated that they would address the matter. After the end of the Trump administration, NARA learned that additional paper records that had been torn up by former President Trump were included in the records transferred to us. Although White House staff during the Trump administration recovered and taped together some of the torn-up records, a number of other torn-up records that were transferred had not been reconstructed by the White House.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.990231454372406}
In a statement on Friday night, Mr. Trump said the material had been turned over to the archives as part of “an ordinary and routine process” and suggested that efforts by Democrats to raise questions about his handling of the documents were a scam. “The fake news is making it seem like me, as the president of the United States, was working in a filing room,” he said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9714473485946655}
The confirmation by the archives that it had found classified information in the material could present the Justice Department with choices about how to proceed. It could open a criminal investigation into whether Mr. Trump and his aides mishandled classified information, as it did in Ms. Clinton’s case. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9607828855514526}
Such an investigation would be highly complex, in part because, as president, Mr. Trump had the ability to easily declassify whatever information he wanted. He could argue that he declassified the materials he took with him before he left the White House. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7008214592933655}
Regardless of whether the bureau opens a criminal investigation, it often conducts a review to determine whether any of the mishandled information exposed sources and methods, and could have damaged national security. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.47601503133773804}
The department could also choose to treat the matter as more routine. Senior U.S. officials often mistakenly mishandle classified information, for example by taking it home from work or accidentally using it or discussing it on unsecured channels. In many of those instances, the F.B.I. treats the matter like “a spill” that has to be cleaned up. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9721987247467041}
In those cases, F.B.I. agents take a range of measures to ensure that any national security secrets that may have been exposed are collected so they can be stored on secure channels, and they scrub, or destroy, electronic devices where the information may have been housed or discussed. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.47400757670402527}
Mr. Trump’s handling of government documents has come under growing scrutiny. A book scheduled to be released in October by a Times reporter revealed how staff members in the White House residence periodically discovered wads of printed paper clogging a toilet, leading them to believe that Mr. Trump had tried to flush them. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5841208696365356}
The former president’s use of cellphones to conduct official business also could have led to large gaps in the official White House logs of his calls on Jan. 6, 2021, hindering the House select committee’s investigation into the Capitol riot. If Mr. Trump did not preserve cellphone records and failed to turn them over to the National Archives, that could also be a violation of the law. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9674793481826782}
Ms. Maloney, the New York Democrat, had warned as early as December 2020 that she believed the Trump administration was not complying with the Presidential Records Act. She wrote a letter to Mr. Ferriero, the national archivist, expressing what she called “grave concerns” that the outgoing administration “may not be adequately preserving records and may be disposing of them.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9427508115768433}
Weeks after the Capitol riot, Ms. Maloney requested voluminous materials from the archives, including documents and communications before, during and after the Jan. 6 attack pertaining to the counting of electoral votes and planned demonstrations and violence. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8073254823684692}
Then, last week, Ms. Maloney announced that she was starting an investigation, after The Washington Post reported that Mr. Trump had been destroying documents and moving boxes to his property in Florida instead of turning them over to the archives. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7483970522880554}
Ms. Maloney said on Friday that the letter from the archives “confirmed that potentially many more Trump Administration records, including direct messages sent by senior officials on multiple social media platforms, are missing.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8042771816253662}
She added, “These new revelations deepen my concern about former President Trump’s flagrant disregard for federal records laws and the potential impact on our historical record.”  {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.49055373668670654}

WASHINGTON — The National Archives confirmed on Friday that it had found classified information among material that President Donald J. Trump had taken with him to his home in Florida when he left office last year and that it had consulted with the Justice Department about the matter. The agency “has identified items marked as classified national security information within the boxes,” according to a letter posted on the National Archives and Record Administration’s website. Last month, the archives retrieved 15 boxes that Mr. Trump took with him to his Mar-a-Lago home from the White House residence when his term ended. The boxes included material subject to the Presidential Records Act, which requires that all documents and records pertaining to official business be turned over to the archives. The items in the boxes included documents, mementos, gifts and letters. The archives did not describe the classified material it found other than to say that it was “classified national security information.” Because the National Archives “identified classified information in the boxes,” the agency “has been in communication with the Department of Justice,” said the letter, written by David S. Ferriero, the national archivist, and sent to Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York and the chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee, who has been scrutinizing how Mr. Trump handled presidential records. Mr. Trump made attacking Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of national security materials a centerpiece of his 2016 presidential campaign. The latest revelations about Mr. Trump’s own laxity with classified information and his haphazard adherence to federal record-keeping laws have drawn cries of hypocrisy from Democrats. Asked how Republicans would square Mr. Trump’s criticism of Ms. Clinton with his own record, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, which at one point approved a resolution condemning Ms. Clinton for using a private email server while she was secretary of state, did not respond. The New York Times reported last week that among the documents that were sent back to the National Archives were some that archivists believed were classified, and that the agency had consulted with the Justice Department about the discovery. Evidence It is not clear what steps, if any, the Justice Department is taking to address the matter. Claim Mr. Ferriero’s letter came on the same day that a federal judge rejected Mr. Trump’s request to dismiss three civil suits seeking to hold him to account for his role in the attack on the Capitol last year. And it came a day after a judge in New York ruled that the former president had to answer questions from state investigators examining his company, the Trump Organization, for evidence of fraud. Evidence In the past two weeks, a series of disclosures has raised new questions about the Trump administration’s failure to follow federal record-keeping laws and its handling of classified information as Mr. Trump left office. Claim Focusing attention on a new element of the issue, the National Archives said in its letter on Friday that the Trump White House had failed to turn over records that included “certain social media records.” The Trump White House, the archives said, failed to take “any steps to capture deleted content from any Trump Administration social media account other than @realDonaldTrump or @POTUS.” The accounts in question included those for aides such as Andrew Giuliani, Chad Gilmartin, Ivanka Trump, Kayleigh McEnany, Kellyanne Conway, Mark Meadows and Peter Navarro that the archives said contained presidential records. Evidence The archives also has not been able to locate any of the Snapchat messages sent by the Trump White House. Claim Mr. Ferriero also wrote that “some White House staff conducted official business using nonofficial electronic messaging accounts that were not copied or forwarded into their official electronic messaging accounts.” The archives said it was in the process of obtaining some of those records. Among those staff members was Mr. Meadows, Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff, who recently turned over hundreds of pages of documents to the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, some of which came from his personal cellphone. The committee said it had questions about why Mr. Meadows had used a personal cellphone, a Signal account and two personal Gmail accounts to conduct official business, and whether he had properly turned over all of the relevant records from those accounts to the National Archives. Evidence Mr. Ferriero made clear in his letter that the archives had been concerned for several years about Mr. Trump’s failure to follow the record-keeping law. Claim In June 2018, the archives “learned from an article in Politico that textual presidential records were being torn up by former President Trump and that White House staff were attempting to tape them back together,” the letter said. The letter added, referring to the National Archives and Records Administration: “The White House Counsel’s Office indicated that they would address the matter. After the end of the Trump administration, NARA learned that additional paper records that had been torn up by former President Trump were included in the records transferred to us. Although White House staff during the Trump administration recovered and taped together some of the torn-up records, a number of other torn-up records that were transferred had not been reconstructed by the White House.” In a statement on Friday night, Mr. Trump said the material had been turned over to the archives as part of “an ordinary and routine process” and suggested that efforts by Democrats to raise questions about his handling of the documents were a scam. “The fake news is making it seem like me, as the president of the United States, was working in a filing room,” he said. The confirmation by the archives that it had found classified information in the material could present the Justice Department with choices about how to proceed. It could open a criminal investigation into whether Mr. Trump and his aides mishandled classified information, as it did in Ms. Clinton’s case. Such an investigation would be highly complex, in part because, as president, Mr. Trump had the ability to easily declassify whatever information he wanted. He could argue that he declassified the materials he took with him before he left the White House. Evidence Regardless of whether the bureau opens a criminal investigation, it often conducts a review to determine whether any of the mishandled information exposed sources and methods, and could have damaged national security. Claim The department could also choose to treat the matter as more routine. Senior U.S. officials often mistakenly mishandle classified information, for example by taking it home from work or accidentally using it or discussing it on unsecured channels. In many of those instances, the F.B.I. treats the matter like “a spill” that has to be cleaned up. Evidence In those cases, F.B.I. agents take a range of measures to ensure that any national security secrets that may have been exposed are collected so they can be stored on secure channels, and they scrub, or destroy, electronic devices where the information may have been housed or discussed. Rebuttal Mr. Trump’s handling of government documents has come under growing scrutiny. A book scheduled to be released in October by a Times reporter revealed how staff members in the White House residence periodically discovered wads of printed paper clogging a toilet, leading them to believe that Mr. Trump had tried to flush them. The former president’s use of cellphones to conduct official business also could have led to large gaps in the official White House logs of his calls on Jan. 6, 2021, hindering the House select committee’s investigation into the Capitol riot. If Mr. Trump did not preserve cellphone records and failed to turn them over to the National Archives, that could also be a violation of the law. Ms. Maloney, the New York Democrat, had warned as early as December 2020 that she believed the Trump administration was not complying with the Presidential Records Act. She wrote a letter to Mr. Ferriero, the national archivist, expressing what she called “grave concerns” that the outgoing administration “may not be adequately preserving records and may be disposing of them.” Weeks after the Capitol riot, Ms. Maloney requested voluminous materials from the archives, including documents and communications before, during and after the Jan. 6 attack pertaining to the counting of electoral votes and planned demonstrations and violence. Then, last week, Ms. Maloney announced that she was starting an investigation, after The Washington Post reported that Mr. Trump had been destroying documents and moving boxes to his property in Florida instead of turning them over to the archives. Ms. Maloney said on Friday that the letter from the archives “confirmed that potentially many more Trump Administration records, including direct messages sent by senior officials on multiple social media platforms, are missing.” Evidence She added, “These new revelations deepen my concern about former President Trump’s flagrant disregard for federal records laws and the potential impact on our historical record.” Claim

nytimes\trump-investigation-letitia-james.txt

Using custom data configuration default-74308ba7348d46ac

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-74308ba7348d46ac\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-74308ba7348d46ac\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

The New York attorney general can question Donald J. Trump and two of his adult children under oath as part of a civil inquiry into his business practices, a judge ruled on Thursday — the latest in a string of legal defeats Mr. Trump has suffered since leaving office. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.93568354845047}
The ruling came just three days after a court filing by the attorney general, Letitia James, in the same matter revealed that Mr. Trump’s longtime accounting firm had cut ties with him and had essentially retracted a decade’s worth of his financial statements.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5512638688087463}
Ms. James’s inquiry, and a parallel criminal investigation by the Manhattan district attorney, are both examining whether Mr. Trump used those statements to improperly inflate the value of his assets so he could receive favorable loans.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7254915833473206}
Lawyers for the Trump family had sought to prohibit Ms. James, a Democrat, from interviewing Mr. Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump. They had argued that Ms. James was politically biased against Mr. Trump and was inappropriately using her civil inquiry to aid the district attorney’s criminal investigation, which she is also participating in. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9351380467414856}
But in a written ruling, the judge, Arthur F. Engoron, dismissed that point, saying it “completely misses the mark.” After dismantling several other arguments, he concluded that Ms. James had uncovered “copious evidence of possible financial fraud” — evidence that entitled her to question the Trump family. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.904191255569458}
“She has the clear right to do so,” he wrote, ordering that Mr. Trump and his son and daughter face questioning in the next three weeks. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3943738341331482}
Thursday’s ruling was the latest in a notable legal losing streak for Mr. Trump, which has included several rebukes from the United States Supreme Court. Since he left office, Mr. Trump has lost the battle to withhold his financial records from the Manhattan district attorney, to block a congressional committee from inspecting his White House records as part of an investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and to appeal the results of the 2020 presidential election.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9718554019927979}
For Mr. Trump, the fallout from some of these decisions could be significant, exposing him to civil and criminal liability as he has come under investigation from at least three prosecutors, in addition to Ms. James. Not only are the authorities in New York scrutinizing Mr. Trump; the district attorney in Atlanta has convened a grand jury as part of an investigation into the former president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9776040315628052}
“Today, justice prevailed,” Ms. James said in a statement, adding, “No one is above the law.”  {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3772605061531067}
In a rambling statement released on Thursday evening, Mr. Trump blasted the decision and attacked Ms. James, Hillary Clinton and the media. “It is a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in history,” he said, adding: “I can’t get a fair hearing in New York because of the hatred of me by Judges and the judiciary.” He has previously denied all wrongdoing. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9003375768661499}
“The entire system is corrupt,” a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization said.  {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6177437901496887}
The ruling does not mean that Ms. James will automatically receive the answers she is seeking. Mr. Trump and his children can invoke their constitutional right not to incriminate themselves, as Mr. Trump’s other adult son, Eric Trump, did when questioned by the attorney general’s office in October 2020. The Trump family also intends to appeal the decision, according to the spokeswoman. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8556602597236633}
The judge’s decision followed a fiery virtual hearing in State Supreme Court in Manhattan on Thursday, during which lawyers for Mr. Trump and the attorney general made their cases. Several times, Mr. Trump’s lawyers became so heated that Justice Engoron and his law clerk had to call for a timeout — raising their hands in the shape of a T, a gesture more often seen at a sporting event than in a courtroom. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9807218313217163}
Although Ms. James signaled in court papers that she had amassed significant evidence against Mr. Trump’s family business — she has accused the Trump Organization of engaging in “fraudulent or misleading” practices — she has said that she needs to question Mr. Trump and his children before determining her next move. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5652860999107361}
Mr. Trump and his children sought to block the questioning, and Ms. James responded in a court filing last month, arguing that there was “heightened need” for testimony from the three family members. She said that by questioning them, she would be able to determine who was responsible for the misstatements and omissions that the company made in its financial documents. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9388502240180969}
Because Ms. James’s inquiry is civil, she cannot bring criminal charges. If she finds evidence of wrongdoing, she can file a lawsuit against Mr. Trump, his company or others involved in the business. In last month’s filing, Ms. James said that her lawyers had not yet reached a final decision on a lawsuit but argued that “the grounds for conducting the investigation are beyond reproach.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.988562822341919}
On Monday, Ms. James released a letter in which Mr. Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, declared that Mr. Trump’s financial statements from 2011-20 were not reliable. Mr. Trump provided those financial statements, which include various disclaimers noting that they are unaudited, to his lenders and at least one insurance company. They are central to both the civil and criminal inquiries into Mr. Trump.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9786682724952698}
Mazars said in the letter that it had not “as a whole” found material discrepancies between the information the Trump Organization provided and the actual value of Mr. Trump’s assets, something that Mr. Trump’s lawyers asserted had effectively rendered the civil and criminal investigations “moot.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6162495613098145}
But Justice Engoron scoffed at that argument, likening it to the dystopian slogans like “War Is Peace” in George Orwell’s “1984”; to Lewis Carroll’s inverse meanings in “Through the Looking Glass”; and to the former senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts.” {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8028669357299805}
Suggesting that the “Mazars red-flag warning” about the financial statements made the investigations moot, the judge wrote, “is as audacious as it is preposterous.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3658311665058136}
The criminal investigation, which is similarly focused on whether Mr. Trump used those statements to mislead his lenders about the value of his hotels, golf clubs and other properties, is being led by Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who inherited it when he took office in January. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8100631237030029}
Last year, under Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., Manhattan prosecutors separately indicted the Trump Organization and its longtime chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, accusing them of conducting a yearslong scheme to evade taxes by compensating employees with special off-the-books benefits such as apartment rentals and luxury cars. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9680941104888916}
Mr. Trump’s lawyers said that the criminal inquiry, which also involves investigators from Ms. James’s office, would improperly benefit if the attorney general’s office questioned Mr. Trump and his children in the civil inquiry.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6747874021530151}
They argued that Ms. James would be able to obtain information that would be valuable to the criminal investigation without having to provide the family members the immunity that they would receive were they to testify in front of a criminal grand jury. (Under New York law, witnesses who appear before the grand jury receive immunity from prosecution on the subject of their testimony.) {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.4927137792110443}
After maintaining a neutral posture during the hearing, Justice Engoron was blunt in his ruling, which also directed the former president to provide the attorney general with documents she sought in her subpoena. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5633732676506042}
Addressing the argument that Ms. James was improperly using the civil investigation to bolster the criminal inquiry, he noted that the Trumps had not been asked to appear before a grand jury. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.32745862007141113}
He was also unconvinced by the argument that Ms. James was politically biased, which Mr. Trump’s lawyers advanced by citing statements that the attorney general had made while campaigning, including her promise to “use every area of the law to investigate” Mr. Trump, who was then still in office. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.7520748376846313}
Justice Engoron said that Ms. James had the right to say whatever she liked about Mr. Trump while running for office and that there was a clear basis for her investigation. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3988445997238159}

The New York attorney general can question Donald J. Trump and two of his adult children under oath as part of a civil inquiry into his business practices, a judge ruled on Thursday — the latest in a string of legal defeats Mr. Trump has suffered since leaving office. The ruling came just three days after a court filing by the attorney general, Letitia James, in the same matter revealed that Mr. Trump’s longtime accounting firm had cut ties with him and had essentially retracted a decade’s worth of his financial statements. Ms. James’s inquiry, and a parallel criminal investigation by the Manhattan district attorney, are both examining whether Mr. Trump used those statements to improperly inflate the value of his assets so he could receive favorable loans. Lawyers for the Trump family had sought to prohibit Ms. James, a Democrat, from interviewing Mr. Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump. They had argued that Ms. James was politically biased against Mr. Trump and was inappropriately using her civil inquiry to aid the district attorney’s criminal investigation, which she is also participating in. Evidence But in a written ruling, the judge, Arthur F. Engoron, dismissed that point, saying it “completely misses the mark.” After dismantling several other arguments, he concluded that Ms. James had uncovered “copious evidence of possible financial fraud” — evidence that entitled her to question the Trump family. Rebuttal “She has the clear right to do so,” he wrote, ordering that Mr. Trump and his son and daughter face questioning in the next three weeks. Claim Thursday’s ruling was the latest in a notable legal losing streak for Mr. Trump, which has included several rebukes from the United States Supreme Court. Since he left office, Mr. Trump has lost the battle to withhold his financial records from the Manhattan district attorney, to block a congressional committee from inspecting his White House records as part of an investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and to appeal the results of the 2020 presidential election. For Mr. Trump, the fallout from some of these decisions could be significant, exposing him to civil and criminal liability as he has come under investigation from at least three prosecutors, in addition to Ms. James. Not only are the authorities in New York scrutinizing Mr. Trump; the district attorney in Atlanta has convened a grand jury as part of an investigation into the former president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. Evidence “Today, justice prevailed,” Ms. James said in a statement, adding, “No one is above the law.” Claim In a rambling statement released on Thursday evening, Mr. Trump blasted the decision and attacked Ms. James, Hillary Clinton and the media. “It is a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in history,” he said, adding: “I can’t get a fair hearing in New York because of the hatred of me by Judges and the judiciary.” He has previously denied all wrongdoing. Evidence “The entire system is corrupt,” a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization said. Claim The ruling does not mean that Ms. James will automatically receive the answers she is seeking. Mr. Trump and his children can invoke their constitutional right not to incriminate themselves, as Mr. Trump’s other adult son, Eric Trump, did when questioned by the attorney general’s office in October 2020. The Trump family also intends to appeal the decision, according to the spokeswoman. The judge’s decision followed a fiery virtual hearing in State Supreme Court in Manhattan on Thursday, during which lawyers for Mr. Trump and the attorney general made their cases. Several times, Mr. Trump’s lawyers became so heated that Justice Engoron and his law clerk had to call for a timeout — raising their hands in the shape of a T, a gesture more often seen at a sporting event than in a courtroom. Although Ms. James signaled in court papers that she had amassed significant evidence against Mr. Trump’s family business — she has accused the Trump Organization of engaging in “fraudulent or misleading” practices — she has said that she needs to question Mr. Trump and his children before determining her next move. Mr. Trump and his children sought to block the questioning, and Ms. James responded in a court filing last month, arguing that there was “heightened need” for testimony from the three family members. She said that by questioning them, she would be able to determine who was responsible for the misstatements and omissions that the company made in its financial documents. Because Ms. James’s inquiry is civil, she cannot bring criminal charges. If she finds evidence of wrongdoing, she can file a lawsuit against Mr. Trump, his company or others involved in the business. In last month’s filing, Ms. James said that her lawyers had not yet reached a final decision on a lawsuit but argued that “the grounds for conducting the investigation are beyond reproach.” On Monday, Ms. James released a letter in which Mr. Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, declared that Mr. Trump’s financial statements from 2011-20 were not reliable. Mr. Trump provided those financial statements, which include various disclaimers noting that they are unaudited, to his lenders and at least one insurance company. They are central to both the civil and criminal inquiries into Mr. Trump. Mazars said in the letter that it had not “as a whole” found material discrepancies between the information the Trump Organization provided and the actual value of Mr. Trump’s assets, something that Mr. Trump’s lawyers asserted had effectively rendered the civil and criminal investigations “moot.” Evidence But Justice Engoron scoffed at that argument, likening it to the dystopian slogans like “War Is Peace” in George Orwell’s “1984”; to Lewis Carroll’s inverse meanings in “Through the Looking Glass”; and to the former senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts.” Rebuttal Suggesting that the “Mazars red-flag warning” about the financial statements made the investigations moot, the judge wrote, “is as audacious as it is preposterous.” Claim The criminal investigation, which is similarly focused on whether Mr. Trump used those statements to mislead his lenders about the value of his hotels, golf clubs and other properties, is being led by Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who inherited it when he took office in January. Last year, under Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., Manhattan prosecutors separately indicted the Trump Organization and its longtime chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, accusing them of conducting a yearslong scheme to evade taxes by compensating employees with special off-the-books benefits such as apartment rentals and luxury cars. Mr. Trump’s lawyers said that the criminal inquiry, which also involves investigators from Ms. James’s office, would improperly benefit if the attorney general’s office questioned Mr. Trump and his children in the civil inquiry. Evidence They argued that Ms. James would be able to obtain information that would be valuable to the criminal investigation without having to provide the family members the immunity that they would receive were they to testify in front of a criminal grand jury. (Under New York law, witnesses who appear before the grand jury receive immunity from prosecution on the subject of their testimony.) Counterclaim After maintaining a neutral posture during the hearing, Justice Engoron was blunt in his ruling, which also directed the former president to provide the attorney general with documents she sought in her subpoena. Addressing the argument that Ms. James was improperly using the civil investigation to bolster the criminal inquiry, he noted that the Trumps had not been asked to appear before a grand jury. Claim He was also unconvinced by the argument that Ms. James was politically biased, which Mr. Trump’s lawyers advanced by citing statements that the attorney general had made while campaigning, including her promise to “use every area of the law to investigate” Mr. Trump, who was then still in office. Counterclaim Justice Engoron said that Ms. James had the right to say whatever she liked about Mr. Trump while running for office and that there was a clear basis for her investigation. Claim

nytimes\tyshawn-sorey-rothko-chapel.txt

Using custom data configuration default-9733e21c2ad88f0b

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-9733e21c2ad88f0b\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-9733e21c2ad88f0b\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Before Tyshawn Sorey composed a note of his latest work, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Rothko Chapel in Houston, he spent hours inside its octagonal temple containing more than a dozen dark canvases. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6403672099113464}
Immersing himself in Mark Rothko’s fields of seeming black, Sorey noticed that the paintings shifted subtly over time — and that time itself appeared to dissolve. The colors changed to match the sun coming through the chapel’s skylight. When he would go outside and return, his adjusting eyes made it feel as though the works were coming to life. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9508497714996338}
Few people can give Rothko the time or space to perceive what Sorey saw. But “Monochromatic Light (Afterlife),” something of a sonic distillation of what he experienced, might give them an idea. Written for the chapel’s 50th anniversary — and delayed a year because of the pandemic — his new work will premiere there on Saturday, ahead of a staged presentation at the Park Avenue Armory in New York this fall. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8384074568748474}
The piece is in part a tribute to one of Sorey’s heroes, the composer Morton Feldman, whose “Rothko Chapel” was written in 1971 for the building, a project by the arts philanthropists Dominique and John de Menil. Feldman’s piece — scored for percussion, celesta, viola, choir and soprano — was an abstract analogue to Rothko’s canvases. Deceptively formless, it is music to be inhabited. But near the end, the viola plays what Feldman called a “quasi-Hebraic melody” that he composed as a teenager, an invocation of and memorial to his (and Rothko’s) heritage. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8923203349113464}
The Feldman is “a special piece,” said Sarah Rothenberg, the artistic director of the presenting organization DaCamera, which, with the chapel, commissioned Sorey’s premiere. “It’s a remarkable synergy between space and music that has become a kind of ambassador.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8610476851463318}
In conceiving a 50th-anniversary commission, a new ambassador was desired. Sorey came to mind, Rothenberg said, because of how he engages with the history of Black Americans — a parallel to the chapel’s civil rights-minded mission. And his style, she knew, had been shaped by Feldman. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4766504764556885}
Sorey, 41, was first exposed to Feldman’s music in college, when he heard his teacher Anton Vishio practicing “Piano.” “It was just beautiful,” Sorey said, adding that the music, its sonorities and its patience “really spoke to me more than anything else I was listening to at the time. Pretty much any composition I’ve written is in some ways inspired by Morton Feldman. It’s hard to shake off such an influence.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9328058958053589}
Along with other influences, including Roscoe Mitchell, Feldman taught Sorey the goal of reaching a place in music where time no longer seems to exist and a listener can become truly present in the moment. “Every sound has its own world at that point,” Sorey said. “You could talk about the technical parts, but the quality that I want to get out of it is presentness.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9433992505073547}
For “Monochromatic Light (Afterlife),” he chose virtually the same instrumentation as “Rothko Chapel” — in a way that the director Peter Sellars, who will stage the piece at the Armory, said reflects lineage in music, “how your granddaughter has your grandmother’s eyes.” But in lieu of the quasi-Hebraic melody, Sorey quotes, in his refracted style, the spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.” He added a piano (played by Rothenberg, doubling on celesta) and changed the soprano soloist to a bass, which he felt better matched the tone of the paintings. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9891865849494934}
Sellars recalled that when he went over the score with Sorey for the first time, they looked at the part and, more or less at the same time, said who they wanted to sing it: the bass-baritone Davóne Tines. Sorey has contributed treatments of spirituals to Tines’s “Mass” recital program, a collaboration that began after Tines first heard what would become “Perle Noire: Meditations for Joséphine,” Sorey’s evening-length work inspired by the life of Josephine Baker, written for the soprano Julia Bullock. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.980911135673523}
“I realized he was able to open meaning in text by recreating it in his voice,” Tines said. Together he and Sorey have revisited the catalog of spirituals, because, Tines said, “Tyshawn is able to reveal the truer psychology of what those songs mean.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8371128439903259}
Feldman referred to “Rothko Chapel” as a “secular service.” While Sorey emphasized that Feldman is just one of the influences on “Monochromatic Light (Afterlife),” the idea of a secular service is what he aims for; it’s why he prefers to call his performances rituals. And it permeates this work, beginning with the first measure: Lasting indefinitely, it is a dissolution of time in which tubular bells resonate at near silence, with pitches of two chords struck at random as the other performers enter the space. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8042705655097961}
“It’s kind of a similar feeling to when I first walked into the chapel,” Sorey said. “It’s almost this cathartic sort of emotion, the moment you get when you walk in there; it’s like a religious experience. So by having the resonant sound happening, and you’re not sure what to make of it — it’s almost a ceremonial, spiritual thing going on. You’re eliminating any sort of external obstacles, for that type of clarity that I think Rothko was always going for in his art.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9626426696777344}
Once the choir joins later, its members sing without vibrato, staggering their breaths to create seamlessly suspended streams of sound that, Sorey said, are not unlike the paintings surrounding them. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.576592206954956}
“To me, the voices are like these panels,” he added. “The sonorities are expressive, expressing a certain type of emotion, like tragedy or grief. So like Rothko, my sonorities and the way I choose to use these voices is not so much about being abstract as much as expressing this feelingful experience. And I’m seeing the listener being surrounded by these ever-changing emotions.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8864784240722656}
Few people — about 300 people over two performances — will get to experience the premiere this weekend. But there are plans to release an album of the work on the ECM label, as a follow-up to its 2015 release of “Rothko Chapel,” which featured artists, including Rothenberg, who return for “Monochromatic Light (Afterlife).” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8921103477478027}
Then, in late September, the piece will travel to the Armory, where the audience will be immersed in panels by Julie Mehretu, an artist whose abstractions share preoccupations with Sorey and Rothko. On the surface, this cavernous space could not be more different from the intimate chapel. But, Sellars said, “what’s beautiful about the Armory is, it can create the occasion for something.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9784785509109497}
He continued: “What Tyshawn is creating is memorial space. Rothko and Feldman created memorial space from silence, from grief, from darkness, where you could feel the presence of erased histories and erased lives that are nonetheless present and moving and speaking within these fields of darkness. ­Feldman and Rothko brought their histories to that space. And I think this group of artists will, too.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8540022373199463}
Details are still being worked out — such as whether to hide the choir — but at the very least, Sorey said, it will “become more intensified” than the presentation in Houston. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.40098199248313904}
“How can we make it more of a ritualistic or ceremonial event?” he added. “How can we intensify the spiritual, metaphysical matter in which the piece is received? That’s what I want: to really magnify that experience.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6686584949493408}

Before Tyshawn Sorey composed a note of his latest work, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Rothko Chapel in Houston, he spent hours inside its octagonal temple containing more than a dozen dark canvases. Immersing himself in Mark Rothko’s fields of seeming black, Sorey noticed that the paintings shifted subtly over time — and that time itself appeared to dissolve. The colors changed to match the sun coming through the chapel’s skylight. When he would go outside and return, his adjusting eyes made it feel as though the works were coming to life. Few people can give Rothko the time or space to perceive what Sorey saw. But “Monochromatic Light (Afterlife),” something of a sonic distillation of what he experienced, might give them an idea. Written for the chapel’s 50th anniversary — and delayed a year because of the pandemic — his new work will premiere there on Saturday, ahead of a staged presentation at the Park Avenue Armory in New York this fall. The piece is in part a tribute to one of Sorey’s heroes, the composer Morton Feldman, whose “Rothko Chapel” was written in 1971 for the building, a project by the arts philanthropists Dominique and John de Menil. Feldman’s piece — scored for percussion, celesta, viola, choir and soprano — was an abstract analogue to Rothko’s canvases. Deceptively formless, it is music to be inhabited. But near the end, the viola plays what Feldman called a “quasi-Hebraic melody” that he composed as a teenager, an invocation of and memorial to his (and Rothko’s) heritage. The Feldman is “a special piece,” said Sarah Rothenberg, the artistic director of the presenting organization DaCamera, which, with the chapel, commissioned Sorey’s premiere. “It’s a remarkable synergy between space and music that has become a kind of ambassador.” In conceiving a 50th-anniversary commission, a new ambassador was desired. Sorey came to mind, Rothenberg said, because of how he engages with the history of Black Americans — a parallel to the chapel’s civil rights-minded mission. And his style, she knew, had been shaped by Feldman. Sorey, 41, was first exposed to Feldman’s music in college, when he heard his teacher Anton Vishio practicing “Piano.” “It was just beautiful,” Sorey said, adding that the music, its sonorities and its patience “really spoke to me more than anything else I was listening to at the time. Pretty much any composition I’ve written is in some ways inspired by Morton Feldman. It’s hard to shake off such an influence.” Along with other influences, including Roscoe Mitchell, Feldman taught Sorey the goal of reaching a place in music where time no longer seems to exist and a listener can become truly present in the moment. “Every sound has its own world at that point,” Sorey said. “You could talk about the technical parts, but the quality that I want to get out of it is presentness.” For “Monochromatic Light (Afterlife),” he chose virtually the same instrumentation as “Rothko Chapel” — in a way that the director Peter Sellars, who will stage the piece at the Armory, said reflects lineage in music, “how your granddaughter has your grandmother’s eyes.” But in lieu of the quasi-Hebraic melody, Sorey quotes, in his refracted style, the spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.” He added a piano (played by Rothenberg, doubling on celesta) and changed the soprano soloist to a bass, which he felt better matched the tone of the paintings. Sellars recalled that when he went over the score with Sorey for the first time, they looked at the part and, more or less at the same time, said who they wanted to sing it: the bass-baritone Davóne Tines. Sorey has contributed treatments of spirituals to Tines’s “Mass” recital program, a collaboration that began after Tines first heard what would become “Perle Noire: Meditations for Joséphine,” Sorey’s evening-length work inspired by the life of Josephine Baker, written for the soprano Julia Bullock. “I realized he was able to open meaning in text by recreating it in his voice,” Tines said. Together he and Sorey have revisited the catalog of spirituals, because, Tines said, “Tyshawn is able to reveal the truer psychology of what those songs mean.” Feldman referred to “Rothko Chapel” as a “secular service.” While Sorey emphasized that Feldman is just one of the influences on “Monochromatic Light (Afterlife),” the idea of a secular service is what he aims for; it’s why he prefers to call his performances rituals. And it permeates this work, beginning with the first measure: Lasting indefinitely, it is a dissolution of time in which tubular bells resonate at near silence, with pitches of two chords struck at random as the other performers enter the space. “It’s kind of a similar feeling to when I first walked into the chapel,” Sorey said. “It’s almost this cathartic sort of emotion, the moment you get when you walk in there; it’s like a religious experience. So by having the resonant sound happening, and you’re not sure what to make of it — it’s almost a ceremonial, spiritual thing going on. You’re eliminating any sort of external obstacles, for that type of clarity that I think Rothko was always going for in his art.” Once the choir joins later, its members sing without vibrato, staggering their breaths to create seamlessly suspended streams of sound that, Sorey said, are not unlike the paintings surrounding them. “To me, the voices are like these panels,” he added. “The sonorities are expressive, expressing a certain type of emotion, like tragedy or grief. So like Rothko, my sonorities and the way I choose to use these voices is not so much about being abstract as much as expressing this feelingful experience. And I’m seeing the listener being surrounded by these ever-changing emotions.” Few people — about 300 people over two performances — will get to experience the premiere this weekend. But there are plans to release an album of the work on the ECM label, as a follow-up to its 2015 release of “Rothko Chapel,” which featured artists, including Rothenberg, who return for “Monochromatic Light (Afterlife).” Then, in late September, the piece will travel to the Armory, where the audience will be immersed in panels by Julie Mehretu, an artist whose abstractions share preoccupations with Sorey and Rothko. On the surface, this cavernous space could not be more different from the intimate chapel. But, Sellars said, “what’s beautiful about the Armory is, it can create the occasion for something.” He continued: “What Tyshawn is creating is memorial space. Rothko and Feldman created memorial space from silence, from grief, from darkness, where you could feel the presence of erased histories and erased lives that are nonetheless present and moving and speaking within these fields of darkness. ­Feldman and Rothko brought their histories to that space. And I think this group of artists will, too.” Details are still being worked out — such as whether to hide the choir — but at the very least, Sorey said, it will “become more intensified” than the presentation in Houston. “How can we make it more of a ritualistic or ceremonial event?” he added. “How can we intensify the spiritual, metaphysical matter in which the piece is received? That’s what I want: to really magnify that experience.” Evidence

nytimes\uc-berkeley-admissions-court-ruling.txt

Using custom data configuration default-1d869432ce07d83a

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-1d869432ce07d83a\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-1d869432ce07d83a\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

The University of California, Berkeley, said it might have to accept thousands fewer students than planned after a state appellate court ruled that it had to keep enrollment at 2020-21 levels, when the pandemic led to an unusually low number of students at the university. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7473452091217041}
The decision, which would freeze student enrollment at 42,347, is the result of a legal battle with a residents’ group, Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods, that has accused the university of failing to provide enough on-campus housing while at the same time admitting high numbers of students, many of them from out of state or other countries. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.614560604095459}
Freezing enrollment at that level means the university, already one of the nation’s most selective, would have 3,050 fewer seats for incoming first-year students and transfer students than it had planned for the fall of 2022. Typically, U.C. Berkeley said, it offers admission to about 21,000 first-year and transfer students and about 9,500 of them enroll. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9834058284759521}
The university, which notified applicants of the decision in an email on Monday, said in a statement that it stands to lose at least $57 million in tuition. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5119625926017761}
To stay at 2020-21 enrollment levels, the university said, it would need to make “a reduction of at least 5,100 in undergraduate admission offers.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4680308699607849}
The University of California Board of Regents has appealed the case to the State Supreme Court in the hopes of avoiding “a calamitous scenario for our students and our campus,” the statement said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4415445327758789}
“This court-mandated decrease in enrollment would be a tragic outcome for thousands of students who have worked incredibly hard to gain admission to Berkeley,” the university said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.443754643201828}
The announcement stirred up anxiety among applicants, who worried that their chances of getting into U.C. Berkeley, the flagship school of the University of California system, had grown even slimmer. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5790144205093384}
“I don’t think it is fair, not only because it’s restricting people who really want to go to Berkley from being able to attend,” but also because it “lowers the amount of financial aid lower- and middle-income families can receive,” Kristina Sanchez, a senior at Downtown Magnets High School in Los Angeles, said in an interview.“And that leaves a lot of people, especially people in our school that aren’t the richest of the bunch, at a disadvantage,” she said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6444292068481445}
Since 2005, U.C. Berkeley has admitted 14,000 students but provided only 1,600 beds, said Phil Bokovoy, president of Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods, which sued the university in 2018. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8217449188232422}
As a result, students have sought housing in Berkeley’s neighborhoods, moving into apartments that were once rent-controlled and displacing low-income and middle-income residents, Mr. Bokovoy said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5745977163314819}
“We’ve seen a massive amount of homelessness in Berkeley as a result,” he said. “It’s created a tremendous problem.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5294979810714722}
Last August, Judge Brad Seligman of the Superior Court of Alameda County agreed with the group that the university “continued to increase and quickly exceeded” its enrollment projections. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4569416642189026}
He also said the university could not go forward with the Upper Hearst Project, a plan for new housing and academic space for faculty members, postdoctoral researchers and graduate students. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5654852390289307}
Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods sued the university in 2019 to stop the project because it said the university had not provided enough information or assurances about how the project would alleviate the housing crisis or affect traffic, noise and other environmental concerns. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.553788423538208}
The Regents appealed Judge Seligman’s ruling last October. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6324412226676941}
On Feb. 10, an appellate court declined to order a stay on the lower court’s decision, meaning that the university would have to abide by the Superior Court’s order to freeze enrollment. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7007889151573181}
“The Regents have not shown that they ‘would suffer irreparable harm outweighing the harm that would be suffered by the other party,’” the appellate court said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4629341661930084}
The appellate court also noted that lawyers for the university had waited three months to file an appeal. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5814272165298462}
“Other than to claim that either they or their counsel did not understand the nature of the judgment from which the appeal is taken, they offer no explanation for this lengthy delay,” the court stated. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4210110306739807}
In their appeal to the State Supreme Court on Monday, lawyers for the Regents requested an immediate stay and argued that freezing enrollment “would have a catastrophic impact on U.C. Berkeley’s ability to admit low-income, underrepresented students.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5412443280220032}
The residents’ group said it was trying to avoid a housing crisis like the one at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where students have been forced to sleep in cars or hotels. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.561569333076477}
Mr. Bokovoy, who has lived in Berkeley since 1983, said his organization had repeatedly tried to meet with university officials to work out a solution outside of the courts but was rebuffed. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5730043053627014}
One idea would be for the university to sign a binding agreement with the city to not accept more students than it could house, he said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8700873851776123}
“That’s all we’ve ever asked for from the beginning,” Mr. Bokovoy said. “But they’ve refused to sit down with us to talk about it.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3396991193294525}
Dan Mogulof, a spokesman for the university, said that administrators have met with city leaders who support the university’s building plans. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5499574542045593}
He said that enrollment is not determined by U.C. Berkeley, but by the Regents and the Legislature, which has called on the state’s public universities to accept more students from California. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5651482939720154}
Mr. Mogulof said that the university’s efforts to build more housing have been stymied by lawsuits from community groups, a development he described as “ironic.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4707934856414795}
“We are in the midst of a very aggressive and very expensive housing initiative, where we’re going to be constructing student housing on every university-owned piece of property,” Mr. Mogulof said. “It’s hard to proceed with that when you’re getting sued by the very people who say they want these projects.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7725069522857666}

The University of California, Berkeley, said it might have to accept thousands fewer students than planned after a state appellate court ruled that it had to keep enrollment at 2020-21 levels, when the pandemic led to an unusually low number of students at the university. The decision, which would freeze student enrollment at 42,347, is the result of a legal battle with a residents’ group, Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods, that has accused the university of failing to provide enough on-campus housing while at the same time admitting high numbers of students, many of them from out of state or other countries. Freezing enrollment at that level means the university, already one of the nation’s most selective, would have 3,050 fewer seats for incoming first-year students and transfer students than it had planned for the fall of 2022. Typically, U.C. Berkeley said, it offers admission to about 21,000 first-year and transfer students and about 9,500 of them enroll. Evidence The university, which notified applicants of the decision in an email on Monday, said in a statement that it stands to lose at least $57 million in tuition. To stay at 2020-21 enrollment levels, the university said, it would need to make “a reduction of at least 5,100 in undergraduate admission offers.” Claim The University of California Board of Regents has appealed the case to the State Supreme Court in the hopes of avoiding “a calamitous scenario for our students and our campus,” the statement said. Evidence “This court-mandated decrease in enrollment would be a tragic outcome for thousands of students who have worked incredibly hard to gain admission to Berkeley,” the university said. The announcement stirred up anxiety among applicants, who worried that their chances of getting into U.C. Berkeley, the flagship school of the University of California system, had grown even slimmer. Claim “I don’t think it is fair, not only because it’s restricting people who really want to go to Berkley from being able to attend,” but also because it “lowers the amount of financial aid lower- and middle-income families can receive,” Kristina Sanchez, a senior at Downtown Magnets High School in Los Angeles, said in an interview.“And that leaves a lot of people, especially people in our school that aren’t the richest of the bunch, at a disadvantage,” she said. Since 2005, U.C. Berkeley has admitted 14,000 students but provided only 1,600 beds, said Phil Bokovoy, president of Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods, which sued the university in 2018. As a result, students have sought housing in Berkeley’s neighborhoods, moving into apartments that were once rent-controlled and displacing low-income and middle-income residents, Mr. Bokovoy said. “We’ve seen a massive amount of homelessness in Berkeley as a result,” he said. “It’s created a tremendous problem.” Evidence Last August, Judge Brad Seligman of the Superior Court of Alameda County agreed with the group that the university “continued to increase and quickly exceeded” its enrollment projections. He also said the university could not go forward with the Upper Hearst Project, a plan for new housing and academic space for faculty members, postdoctoral researchers and graduate students. Claim Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods sued the university in 2019 to stop the project because it said the university had not provided enough information or assurances about how the project would alleviate the housing crisis or affect traffic, noise and other environmental concerns. Evidence The Regents appealed Judge Seligman’s ruling last October. Claim On Feb. 10, an appellate court declined to order a stay on the lower court’s decision, meaning that the university would have to abide by the Superior Court’s order to freeze enrollment. “The Regents have not shown that they ‘would suffer irreparable harm outweighing the harm that would be suffered by the other party,’” the appellate court said. Evidence The appellate court also noted that lawyers for the university had waited three months to file an appeal. Claim “Other than to claim that either they or their counsel did not understand the nature of the judgment from which the appeal is taken, they offer no explanation for this lengthy delay,” the court stated. In their appeal to the State Supreme Court on Monday, lawyers for the Regents requested an immediate stay and argued that freezing enrollment “would have a catastrophic impact on U.C. Berkeley’s ability to admit low-income, underrepresented students.” The residents’ group said it was trying to avoid a housing crisis like the one at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where students have been forced to sleep in cars or hotels. Mr. Bokovoy, who has lived in Berkeley since 1983, said his organization had repeatedly tried to meet with university officials to work out a solution outside of the courts but was rebuffed. Evidence One idea would be for the university to sign a binding agreement with the city to not accept more students than it could house, he said. Claim “That’s all we’ve ever asked for from the beginning,” Mr. Bokovoy said. “But they’ve refused to sit down with us to talk about it.” Dan Mogulof, a spokesman for the university, said that administrators have met with city leaders who support the university’s building plans. He said that enrollment is not determined by U.C. Berkeley, but by the Regents and the Legislature, which has called on the state’s public universities to accept more students from California. Mr. Mogulof said that the university’s efforts to build more housing have been stymied by lawsuits from community groups, a development he described as “ironic.” “We are in the midst of a very aggressive and very expensive housing initiative, where we’re going to be constructing student housing on every university-owned piece of property,” Mr. Mogulof said. “It’s hard to proceed with that when you’re getting sued by the very people who say they want these projects.” Evidence

nytimes\ukraine-conflict-russia-military.txt

Using custom data configuration default-b23caedf28beebc6

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-b23caedf28beebc6\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-b23caedf28beebc6\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

STANYTSIA LUHANSKA, Ukraine — Residents near Ukraine’s front line rushed into basements for cover Thursday as exchanges of artillery fire with Russian-backed separatists reached their most intense level in months, an ominous development amid Western fears that Russia might use the fighting as a pretext to invade Ukraine. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9540051221847534}
As the United States and Russia traded conflicting accounts over whether Russian forces were really pulling back from the Ukrainian border, as Moscow has insisted, the separatists claimed they had come under fire from the Ukrainians. That is precisely the sort of incident Western officials have warned Russia might try to use to justify military action. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9761240482330322}
At the White House, President Biden said “every indication we have is they’re prepared to go into Ukraine, attack Ukraine.” He said the United States had “reason to believe” that Russia was “engaged in a false flag operation to have an excuse to go in.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9184969663619995}
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken made an unscheduled trip to New York, where he told the United Nations Security Council that American intelligence “indicates clearly” that Russian forces surrounding the country from three sides “are preparing to launch an attack against Ukraine in the coming days.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8069050908088684}
The escalation of tensions rippled throughout the markets, where stock prices plunged. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8551743626594543}
Russia continued to insist Thursday that it had no plans to invade, issuing new updates about troop withdrawals and dismissing the American invasion warnings as “information terrorism.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.43422722816467285}
The Russian government also published a lengthy response to American proposals made last month to ease tensions, maintaining the Kremlin’s push to regain a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and issuing a vague warning of new military deployments. If the United States does not accede to its demands, the document said, “Russia will be forced to respond, including through the implementation of measures of a military-technical character.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9772310256958008}
In eastern Ukraine on Thursday, where a kindergarten was shelled, the spike in violence evoked the sort of scenario that Western leaders have been warning of amid the enormous Russian troop buildup surrounding Ukraine. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8436099290847778}
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia this week repeated his false claim that Ukraine was carrying out a “genocide” against Russian speakers in the country’s east, while the Russian authorities announced an investigation into supposed “mass graves” of Russian-speaking victims of Ukrainian forces. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9193276166915894}
And on Thursday, the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, offered an ominous assessment. “The excessive concentration of Ukrainian forces near the contact line, together with possible provocations, can pose terrible danger,” he said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9241170883178711}
Mr. Blinken told the Security Council that Moscow appeared to be setting the stage. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6256164908409119}
“Russia plans to manufacture a pretext for its attack,” he said, citing a “so-called terrorist bombing” or “a fake, even a real attack” with chemical weapons. “This could be a violent event that Russia will blame on Ukraine,” he said, “or an outrageous accusation that Russia will level against the Ukrainian government.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.948399543762207}
If so, it would not be the first time. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.5361522436141968}
When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, it did so after claiming that Russian speakers there were threatened by the pro-Western revolution in Kyiv, which the Kremlin described as a fascist coup. And in 2008, Russia invaded Georgia after the Georgian Army moved into a Russian-backed separatist enclave there. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9869713187217712}
The skirmishing in Eastern Europe between Ukrainian forces and Kremlin-backed separatists is longstanding, but Thursday’s violence was the worst since a cease-fire was reached two years ago. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.750116229057312}
The combatants exchanged not just shells but accusations. The Ukrainian military said three adult civilians had been wounded at the kindergarten, and on the other side, a Russian-backed separatist leader claimed Ukraine had launched mortar fire “barbarically and cynically.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9787775278091431}
The artillery fire began in the early morning and did not let up with the advent of evening. The sharp crack of explosions echoed off buildings and flashes of light from incoming shells silhouetted trees. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9592003226280212}
The days of whiplash developments made unmistakable the volatility of a crisis that American officials fear could lead to an assault by one of the world’s most powerful militaries against Ukraine, Europe’s second-biggest country, a development younger Europeans never thought they would see. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6758676171302795}
Still, in Moscow, many analysts remained convinced that Mr. Putin’s troop buildup was a bluff — a means to pressure the West to rule out Ukrainian membership in NATO and to force the alliance to roll back its presence in Eastern Europe. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.7789831161499023}
Whatever his true intentions, the diplomatic and military crisis has also become an intense battle of public messaging, with both Moscow and Washington deploying vivid imagery and rhetoric to discredit the other side. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.3538915812969208}
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said at a meeting of his NATO counterparts in Brussels that Russia continued to move troops closer to Ukraine’s borders. He said it was also adding combat aircraft and stocking up on blood supplies in anticipation of casualties on the battlefield. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9830158352851868}
“I know firsthand that you don’t do these sorts of things for no reason,” said Mr. Austin, a retired four-star Army general. “And you certainly don’t do them if you’re getting ready to pack up and go home.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4761444926261902}
Early Friday morning, soon after arriving in Munich for an annual security conference, the State Department’s spokesman said Mr. Blinken had accepted a proposal to meet with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, late next week.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.770169198513031}
The spokesman, Ned Price, did not provide a time or place for the meeting, the two diplomats’ second in two months, except to say it would not happen if Russia further invaded Ukraine. “If they do invade in the coming days, it will make clear they were never serious about diplomacy,” Mr. Price said in the statement. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9751361608505249}
Although there are some 150,000 Russian troops surrounding Ukraine, Russia has cast the deployments as little more than military drills. On Thursday, international reporters were invited to visit Belarus — a close Kremlin ally — to see for themselves. There, amid the roar of Russian and Belarusian firepower, they were treated to some mocking comments directed at Western intelligence agencies by Belarus’s strongman leader, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9860419631004333}
“There will be no invasion tomorrow,” Mr. Lukashenko said as the military drills were staged at a desolate military training ground southeast of Minsk, the country’s capital. “Are you still entertaining this crazy idea?” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7377699613571167}
Mr. Lukashenko was scheduled to meet with Mr. Putin in Moscow on Friday, and pledged that he was willing to keep Russian troops in his country for “as long as necessary.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6823360919952393}
Western officials say the Russian troops gathered in Belarus are part of what makes the current invasion threat so dire, allowing the Kremlin to attack from the north as well as from the Russian mainland to the east and from Crimea and the Black Sea to the south. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4589606821537018}
A key question now is whether Russia will continue its diplomatic engagement with the West. While Mr. Putin and Mr. Lavrov held a flurry of meetings and calls with their Western counterparts in recent weeks, there were no more such interactions on the calendar for the coming days. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.38031816482543945}
Mr. Blinken said that the State Department was “evaluating” the Russian document delivered to Washington on Thursday and that he had proposed to Mr. Lavrov that the two meet in Europe next week. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8287609219551086}
The State Department spokesman said the Russians had responded with proposed meeting dates for late next week, “which we are accepting, provided there is no further Russian invasion of Ukraine.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6707884073257446}
The document indicated there was only a narrow diplomatic way forward. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.740172266960144}
It said an American proposal to allow Russia to inspect U.S. missile defense bases in Poland and Romania that the Kremlin sees as a threat could “be further taken into consideration.” It also said that Russia saw “the potential for mutually acceptable agreements” on the subject of long-range bomber flights near national borders. And it said that Russia was “open in principle” to a discussion of replacing the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, a landmark 1987 nuclear arms-control pact that the Trump administration abandoned in 2019, after accusing Russia of violating it. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.989428699016571}
But Moscow insisted that those elements could be agreed upon only as part of a package that addressed Russia’s central demands. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.917600154876709}
“We welcome the readiness of the United States for appropriate consultations,” the document said. “However, this work cannot replace the settlement of the key problems posed by Russia.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.35053208470344543}
Among Russia’s demands was that NATO militaries halt all cooperation with Ukraine and remove all Western weaponry delivered to the country in recent years to help it defend against Russia and Russian-backed separatists. The document also repeated Russia’s central demands for “security guarantees” that Mr. Putin first described last November, including that NATO assure that Ukraine would never join the alliance and that it would pull back troops stationed in countries that joined the alliance after 1997. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9735008478164673}
“Our ‘red lines’ and fundamental security interests are being ignored, and Russia’s inalienable right to assure them is being rejected,” the document said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4046372175216675}
Western leaders have rejected the demand to pull back troops or bar certain countries from NATO, but have hinted at the possibility of Ukraine itself swearing off membership in the alliance. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4204797148704529}
And while the letter reiterated recent denials by Russian officials of any plans to invade Ukraine, it also warned of an unspecified military response if those demands were not met, one that analysts have interpreted as the potential deployment of advanced missile systems in a new, more threatening posture. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.647370457649231}
“No ‘Russian invasion of Ukraine’, which the United States and its allies have officially been announcing since last fall, is happening, nor is one being planned,” the document said. But if the United States does not provide “firm, legally binding guarantees of our security,” it said, “Russia will be forced to respond, including through the implementation of measures of a military-technical character.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.905907392501831}

STANYTSIA LUHANSKA, Ukraine — Residents near Ukraine’s front line rushed into basements for cover Thursday as exchanges of artillery fire with Russian-backed separatists reached their most intense level in months, an ominous development amid Western fears that Russia might use the fighting as a pretext to invade Ukraine. As the United States and Russia traded conflicting accounts over whether Russian forces were really pulling back from the Ukrainian border, as Moscow has insisted, the separatists claimed they had come under fire from the Ukrainians. That is precisely the sort of incident Western officials have warned Russia might try to use to justify military action. At the White House, President Biden said “every indication we have is they’re prepared to go into Ukraine, attack Ukraine.” He said the United States had “reason to believe” that Russia was “engaged in a false flag operation to have an excuse to go in.” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken made an unscheduled trip to New York, where he told the United Nations Security Council that American intelligence “indicates clearly” that Russian forces surrounding the country from three sides “are preparing to launch an attack against Ukraine in the coming days.” Evidence The escalation of tensions rippled throughout the markets, where stock prices plunged. Claim Russia continued to insist Thursday that it had no plans to invade, issuing new updates about troop withdrawals and dismissing the American invasion warnings as “information terrorism.” The Russian government also published a lengthy response to American proposals made last month to ease tensions, maintaining the Kremlin’s push to regain a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and issuing a vague warning of new military deployments. If the United States does not accede to its demands, the document said, “Russia will be forced to respond, including through the implementation of measures of a military-technical character.” In eastern Ukraine on Thursday, where a kindergarten was shelled, the spike in violence evoked the sort of scenario that Western leaders have been warning of amid the enormous Russian troop buildup surrounding Ukraine. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia this week repeated his false claim that Ukraine was carrying out a “genocide” against Russian speakers in the country’s east, while the Russian authorities announced an investigation into supposed “mass graves” of Russian-speaking victims of Ukrainian forces. And on Thursday, the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, offered an ominous assessment. “The excessive concentration of Ukrainian forces near the contact line, together with possible provocations, can pose terrible danger,” he said. Evidence Mr. Blinken told the Security Council that Moscow appeared to be setting the stage. Claim “Russia plans to manufacture a pretext for its attack,” he said, citing a “so-called terrorist bombing” or “a fake, even a real attack” with chemical weapons. “This could be a violent event that Russia will blame on Ukraine,” he said, “or an outrageous accusation that Russia will level against the Ukrainian government.” Evidence If so, it would not be the first time. Rebuttal When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, it did so after claiming that Russian speakers there were threatened by the pro-Western revolution in Kyiv, which the Kremlin described as a fascist coup. And in 2008, Russia invaded Georgia after the Georgian Army moved into a Russian-backed separatist enclave there. The skirmishing in Eastern Europe between Ukrainian forces and Kremlin-backed separatists is longstanding, but Thursday’s violence was the worst since a cease-fire was reached two years ago. The combatants exchanged not just shells but accusations. The Ukrainian military said three adult civilians had been wounded at the kindergarten, and on the other side, a Russian-backed separatist leader claimed Ukraine had launched mortar fire “barbarically and cynically.” The artillery fire began in the early morning and did not let up with the advent of evening. The sharp crack of explosions echoed off buildings and flashes of light from incoming shells silhouetted trees. The days of whiplash developments made unmistakable the volatility of a crisis that American officials fear could lead to an assault by one of the world’s most powerful militaries against Ukraine, Europe’s second-biggest country, a development younger Europeans never thought they would see. Evidence Still, in Moscow, many analysts remained convinced that Mr. Putin’s troop buildup was a bluff — a means to pressure the West to rule out Ukrainian membership in NATO and to force the alliance to roll back its presence in Eastern Europe. Counterclaim Whatever his true intentions, the diplomatic and military crisis has also become an intense battle of public messaging, with both Moscow and Washington deploying vivid imagery and rhetoric to discredit the other side. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said at a meeting of his NATO counterparts in Brussels that Russia continued to move troops closer to Ukraine’s borders. He said it was also adding combat aircraft and stocking up on blood supplies in anticipation of casualties on the battlefield. “I know firsthand that you don’t do these sorts of things for no reason,” said Mr. Austin, a retired four-star Army general. “And you certainly don’t do them if you’re getting ready to pack up and go home.” Early Friday morning, soon after arriving in Munich for an annual security conference, the State Department’s spokesman said Mr. Blinken had accepted a proposal to meet with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, late next week. The spokesman, Ned Price, did not provide a time or place for the meeting, the two diplomats’ second in two months, except to say it would not happen if Russia further invaded Ukraine. “If they do invade in the coming days, it will make clear they were never serious about diplomacy,” Mr. Price said in the statement. Although there are some 150,000 Russian troops surrounding Ukraine, Russia has cast the deployments as little more than military drills. On Thursday, international reporters were invited to visit Belarus — a close Kremlin ally — to see for themselves. There, amid the roar of Russian and Belarusian firepower, they were treated to some mocking comments directed at Western intelligence agencies by Belarus’s strongman leader, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko. “There will be no invasion tomorrow,” Mr. Lukashenko said as the military drills were staged at a desolate military training ground southeast of Minsk, the country’s capital. “Are you still entertaining this crazy idea?” Mr. Lukashenko was scheduled to meet with Mr. Putin in Moscow on Friday, and pledged that he was willing to keep Russian troops in his country for “as long as necessary.” Western officials say the Russian troops gathered in Belarus are part of what makes the current invasion threat so dire, allowing the Kremlin to attack from the north as well as from the Russian mainland to the east and from Crimea and the Black Sea to the south. A key question now is whether Russia will continue its diplomatic engagement with the West. While Mr. Putin and Mr. Lavrov held a flurry of meetings and calls with their Western counterparts in recent weeks, there were no more such interactions on the calendar for the coming days. Mr. Blinken said that the State Department was “evaluating” the Russian document delivered to Washington on Thursday and that he had proposed to Mr. Lavrov that the two meet in Europe next week. The State Department spokesman said the Russians had responded with proposed meeting dates for late next week, “which we are accepting, provided there is no further Russian invasion of Ukraine.” Evidence The document indicated there was only a narrow diplomatic way forward. Claim It said an American proposal to allow Russia to inspect U.S. missile defense bases in Poland and Romania that the Kremlin sees as a threat could “be further taken into consideration.” It also said that Russia saw “the potential for mutually acceptable agreements” on the subject of long-range bomber flights near national borders. And it said that Russia was “open in principle” to a discussion of replacing the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, a landmark 1987 nuclear arms-control pact that the Trump administration abandoned in 2019, after accusing Russia of violating it. Evidence But Moscow insisted that those elements could be agreed upon only as part of a package that addressed Russia’s central demands. Rebuttal “We welcome the readiness of the United States for appropriate consultations,” the document said. “However, this work cannot replace the settlement of the key problems posed by Russia.” Among Russia’s demands was that NATO militaries halt all cooperation with Ukraine and remove all Western weaponry delivered to the country in recent years to help it defend against Russia and Russian-backed separatists. The document also repeated Russia’s central demands for “security guarantees” that Mr. Putin first described last November, including that NATO assure that Ukraine would never join the alliance and that it would pull back troops stationed in countries that joined the alliance after 1997. “Our ‘red lines’ and fundamental security interests are being ignored, and Russia’s inalienable right to assure them is being rejected,” the document said. Western leaders have rejected the demand to pull back troops or bar certain countries from NATO, but have hinted at the possibility of Ukraine itself swearing off membership in the alliance. And while the letter reiterated recent denials by Russian officials of any plans to invade Ukraine, it also warned of an unspecified military response if those demands were not met, one that analysts have interpreted as the potential deployment of advanced missile systems in a new, more threatening posture. “No ‘Russian invasion of Ukraine’, which the United States and its allies have officially been announcing since last fall, is happening, nor is one being planned,” the document said. But if the United States does not provide “firm, legally binding guarantees of our security,” it said, “Russia will be forced to respond, including through the implementation of measures of a military-technical character.” Evidence

nytimes\ukraine-donald-trump-beijing-olympics.txt

Using custom data configuration default-b5f66c37f815c44f

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-b5f66c37f815c44f\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-b5f66c37f815c44f\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

(Want to get this newsletter in your inbox? Here’s the sign-up.)  {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.6369972825050354}
Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Thursday. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.6825888752937317}
1. A dramatic spike in shelling is heightening fears that Russia may claim a pretext to invade Ukraine. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.9281641244888306}
Exchanges of artillery fire up and down the front line between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatist forces reached their most intense level in months. The Ukrainian military said shelling there damaged a kindergarten and wounded three adult civilians. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9832866191864014}
Perhaps most worrisome, separatists claimed that they had come under fire from the Ukrainians — precisely the sort of incident Western officials have warned that Russia might try to use to justify military action. Moscow has long invoked what it says is its obligation to protect ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.48998814821243286}
President Biden warned that the threat of an attack remained “very high.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the U.N. Security Council that Russia’s ground and air forces “are preparing to launch an attack against Ukraine in the coming days.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9167929887771606}
2. The New York attorney general can question Donald J. Trump, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr., in a civil inquiry, a judge ruled. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6133635640144348}
The inquiry by the attorney general, Letitia James, and a parallel criminal investigation led by the Manhattan district attorney are examining whether Trump improperly inflated the value of his assets to receive favorable loans. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7728967666625977}
Trump has long invented facts and figures about his wealth. Now, dropped by his accountants, he is making new claims about his net worth. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4702978730201721}
3. The Omicron surge seems to be slowing in much of the world, but the W.H.O. said it was keeping an eye on an Omicron subvariant. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7890739440917969}
New cases worldwide dropped 19 percent from Feb. 7 to Feb. 13 compared with the week before. But, the agency added, the drop in testing rates around the world means global case numbers might not reflect the true spread of the virus. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9447966814041138}
The W.H.O. also cautioned that the subvariant of Omicron, BA.2, which scientists believe is even more contagious, appeared to be “steadily increasing” and was now the dominant variant in China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Philippines. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5563215017318726}
In the U.S.: {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8679031133651733}
An F.D.A. official said the best time for a fourth vaccine shot — if needed — may be in the fall, when the spread of the coronavirus is expected to pick up again. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6387869715690613}
Cancer patients, transplant recipients and others highly vulnerable to Covid feel abandoned as their neighbors, and their government, seek a return to normal. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6316101551055908}
4. A confrontation between protesters and the police is looming in Ottawa. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.8373132944107056}
Ontario’s police force gathered outside Ottawa’s city center in an apparent preparation to end the trucker protests that have stalled traffic there for three weeks. The police have distributed written notices to the protesters, warning them to leave or face penalties. Crews of workers put up wire fencing around the Parliament building. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9862121343612671}
“It is high time that these illegal and dangerous activities stop, including here in Ottawa,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4039747416973114}
Many protesters vowed to stay put. One said the protest leaders’ instructions were to remain in their trucks, lock the doors and not open them for anyone, including the police. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7130520939826965}
5. Spotify lured Joe Rogan with a $200 million deal, double initial reports. It made the company a podcasting giant, but controversy followed. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8554536700248718}
To propel the music streaming platform into an all-purpose audio juggernaut, executives viewed Rogan — a no-holds-barred comedian and sports commentator — as the star it needed. Spotify’s stock price jumped 17 percent the week the deal was announced in 2020. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9497866630554199}
The move brought a wave of concern inside the company over Rogan’s sometimes divisive content. Last month, the issue exploded: 270 scientists wrote to Spotify about Covid misinformation on Rogan’s show, and Neil Young, the rock icon, demanded that Spotify remove his music. Now Spotify faces the sort of cultural storm that has engulfed Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9776630401611328}
6. This week, we learned that the megadrought in the American Southwest is the worst in at least 1,200 years — and shows no signs of letting up. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.616407573223114}
Dry conditions are expected to continue into the spring and beyond, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said. A continuation of La Niña, a climate pattern that influences weather worldwide, will contribute to what are expected to be higher than normal temperatures and lower than normal precipitation over much of the West through May. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9857801795005798}
Warmer than normal temperatures are also expected across most of the Eastern half of the country over the next three months. Wetter than normal conditions are forecast for the Ohio Valley, and it’s likely that drought will develop in Florida. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9871288537979126}
7. Kamila Valieva’s week of turmoil came to a crashing end. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.893477737903595}
The prima ballerina of figure skating was expected to lead a Russian sweep of the medals in women’s singles. But after reports that she had tested positive for a banned substance several weeks before the Games, that task turned out to be too much. Valieva, 15, finished fourth, after a disastrous sequence of falls and stumbles. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9683892726898193}
Her Russian teammate Anna Shcherbakova, 17, the reigning world champion, won gold with a smooth and poignant performance. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5306048393249512}
In other events, Canada beat the U.S. in women’s hockey for gold; the U.S. men’s curling team’s bid for a second gold medal ended after a loss in the semifinal to Britain; and Mikaela Shiffrin will leave Beijing without an individual medal. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9861173033714294}
8. Half a century ago, a presence like Faith Ringgold’s had to fight to exist in the mainstream art world. Now, there’s a place for it — that she created. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.43665122985839844}
A survey of the artist’s 40-year-career, which fills three floors of the New Museum in New York City, is about “not just how to survive as a Black person in a racist world, but how, as a woman, to thrive in any world at all,” our co-chief art critic Holland Cotter writes. What once made Ringgold, 91, an outlier, “puts her front and center now.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9182078242301941}
Also in New York: A landmark exhibition of drawings by Jacques-Louis David, the chief propagandist of the French Revolution, stages the ultimate showdown of culture and politics. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6354600191116333}
9. “I’ve always wanted to prove that I can do all kinds of things.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7302716374397278}
Sam Waterston has had a long and varied career, from Shakespeare in the Park to “The Newsroom” and “Grace and Frankie.” But he remains best known for “Law & Order.” The actor originally signed on for only one season as district attorney Jack McCoy. But over 16 seasons, he became synonymous with the series, which was canceled in 2010. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7850627303123474}
Now it’s back, and so is Waterston — partly as a courtesy to Dick Wolf, the series’s creator, partly as a kind of victory lap. “It’s nice to come back and just witness the thing we made,” Waterston said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.45950421690940857}
Want to watch a medical drama, a spy thriller or a snowy neo-noir? Finland has you covered. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.7466766834259033}
10. And finally, the unmasking of a parasitic wasp. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.9636163711547852}
The tiny, iridescent Ormyrus labotus always seemed suspicious for a parasitoid wasp. Such wasps lay their eggs on or inside other insects and arthropods, and the larvae eat their way out. But Ormyrus labotus had been observed laying its eggs in more than 65 different species of insects — far more than one or a few. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9729772210121155}
Entomologists were right to be suspicious. DNA samples have revealed that Ormyrus labotus is actually a complex of at least 16 genetically distinct species that are essentially indistinguishable to the eye. The findings are the latest to reveal supposedly generalist parasitic insect species as complexes of many species. Scientists are certain there are more. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9434771537780762}
Have a revealing night. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.986828088760376}
Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5156764388084412}
Want to catch up on past briefings? You can browse them here. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6799027323722839}
What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes.com. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.8956917524337769}
Here are today’s Mini Crossword, Spelling Bee and Wordle. If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4853686988353729}

(Want to get this newsletter in your inbox? Here’s the sign-up.) Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Thursday. Lead 1. A dramatic spike in shelling is heightening fears that Russia may claim a pretext to invade Ukraine. Claim Exchanges of artillery fire up and down the front line between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatist forces reached their most intense level in months. The Ukrainian military said shelling there damaged a kindergarten and wounded three adult civilians. Perhaps most worrisome, separatists claimed that they had come under fire from the Ukrainians — precisely the sort of incident Western officials have warned that Russia might try to use to justify military action. Moscow has long invoked what it says is its obligation to protect ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. President Biden warned that the threat of an attack remained “very high.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the U.N. Security Council that Russia’s ground and air forces “are preparing to launch an attack against Ukraine in the coming days.” 2. The New York attorney general can question Donald J. Trump, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr., in a civil inquiry, a judge ruled. The inquiry by the attorney general, Letitia James, and a parallel criminal investigation led by the Manhattan district attorney are examining whether Trump improperly inflated the value of his assets to receive favorable loans. Evidence Trump has long invented facts and figures about his wealth. Now, dropped by his accountants, he is making new claims about his net worth. 3. The Omicron surge seems to be slowing in much of the world, but the W.H.O. said it was keeping an eye on an Omicron subvariant. Claim New cases worldwide dropped 19 percent from Feb. 7 to Feb. 13 compared with the week before. But, the agency added, the drop in testing rates around the world means global case numbers might not reflect the true spread of the virus. The W.H.O. also cautioned that the subvariant of Omicron, BA.2, which scientists believe is even more contagious, appeared to be “steadily increasing” and was now the dominant variant in China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Philippines. Evidence In the U.S.: Claim An F.D.A. official said the best time for a fourth vaccine shot — if needed — may be in the fall, when the spread of the coronavirus is expected to pick up again. Evidence Cancer patients, transplant recipients and others highly vulnerable to Covid feel abandoned as their neighbors, and their government, seek a return to normal. 4. A confrontation between protesters and the police is looming in Ottawa. Claim Ontario’s police force gathered outside Ottawa’s city center in an apparent preparation to end the trucker protests that have stalled traffic there for three weeks. The police have distributed written notices to the protesters, warning them to leave or face penalties. Crews of workers put up wire fencing around the Parliament building. “It is high time that these illegal and dangerous activities stop, including here in Ottawa,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said. Many protesters vowed to stay put. One said the protest leaders’ instructions were to remain in their trucks, lock the doors and not open them for anyone, including the police. 5. Spotify lured Joe Rogan with a $200 million deal, double initial reports. It made the company a podcasting giant, but controversy followed. To propel the music streaming platform into an all-purpose audio juggernaut, executives viewed Rogan — a no-holds-barred comedian and sports commentator — as the star it needed. Spotify’s stock price jumped 17 percent the week the deal was announced in 2020. The move brought a wave of concern inside the company over Rogan’s sometimes divisive content. Last month, the issue exploded: 270 scientists wrote to Spotify about Covid misinformation on Rogan’s show, and Neil Young, the rock icon, demanded that Spotify remove his music. Now Spotify faces the sort of cultural storm that has engulfed Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Evidence 6. This week, we learned that the megadrought in the American Southwest is the worst in at least 1,200 years — and shows no signs of letting up. Claim Dry conditions are expected to continue into the spring and beyond, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said. A continuation of La Niña, a climate pattern that influences weather worldwide, will contribute to what are expected to be higher than normal temperatures and lower than normal precipitation over much of the West through May. Warmer than normal temperatures are also expected across most of the Eastern half of the country over the next three months. Wetter than normal conditions are forecast for the Ohio Valley, and it’s likely that drought will develop in Florida. Evidence 7. Kamila Valieva’s week of turmoil came to a crashing end. Claim The prima ballerina of figure skating was expected to lead a Russian sweep of the medals in women’s singles. But after reports that she had tested positive for a banned substance several weeks before the Games, that task turned out to be too much. Valieva, 15, finished fourth, after a disastrous sequence of falls and stumbles. Her Russian teammate Anna Shcherbakova, 17, the reigning world champion, won gold with a smooth and poignant performance. In other events, Canada beat the U.S. in women’s hockey for gold; the U.S. men’s curling team’s bid for a second gold medal ended after a loss in the semifinal to Britain; and Mikaela Shiffrin will leave Beijing without an individual medal. 8. Half a century ago, a presence like Faith Ringgold’s had to fight to exist in the mainstream art world. Now, there’s a place for it — that she created. A survey of the artist’s 40-year-career, which fills three floors of the New Museum in New York City, is about “not just how to survive as a Black person in a racist world, but how, as a woman, to thrive in any world at all,” our co-chief art critic Holland Cotter writes. What once made Ringgold, 91, an outlier, “puts her front and center now.” Evidence Also in New York: A landmark exhibition of drawings by Jacques-Louis David, the chief propagandist of the French Revolution, stages the ultimate showdown of culture and politics. 9. “I’ve always wanted to prove that I can do all kinds of things.” Claim Sam Waterston has had a long and varied career, from Shakespeare in the Park to “The Newsroom” and “Grace and Frankie.” But he remains best known for “Law & Order.” The actor originally signed on for only one season as district attorney Jack McCoy. But over 16 seasons, he became synonymous with the series, which was canceled in 2010. Now it’s back, and so is Waterston — partly as a courtesy to Dick Wolf, the series’s creator, partly as a kind of victory lap. “It’s nice to come back and just witness the thing we made,” Waterston said. Evidence Want to watch a medical drama, a spy thriller or a snowy neo-noir? Finland has you covered. Lead 10. And finally, the unmasking of a parasitic wasp. Claim The tiny, iridescent Ormyrus labotus always seemed suspicious for a parasitoid wasp. Such wasps lay their eggs on or inside other insects and arthropods, and the larvae eat their way out. But Ormyrus labotus had been observed laying its eggs in more than 65 different species of insects — far more than one or a few. Entomologists were right to be suspicious. DNA samples have revealed that Ormyrus labotus is actually a complex of at least 16 genetically distinct species that are essentially indistinguishable to the eye. The findings are the latest to reveal supposedly generalist parasitic insect species as complexes of many species. Scientists are certain there are more. Evidence Have a revealing night. Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern. Want to catch up on past briefings? You can browse them here. Claim What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes.com. Lead Here are today’s Mini Crossword, Spelling Bee and Wordle. If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here. Evidence

nytimes\ukraine-russia-separatists-shelling.txt

Using custom data configuration default-b8b26294ef7a9eaf

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-b8b26294ef7a9eaf\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-b8b26294ef7a9eaf\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

NOVOTOSHKIVSKE, Ukraine — Artillery shells struck a ring of frontline towns in eastern Ukraine Friday, blowing out windows, hitting schools, homes and military positions — and stirring fears that the escalation here is only the prelude to direct Russian military action. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9455444812774658}
“I have a small baby,” said Nadya Lapygina, a resident of Staryi Aidar, one of several dozen towns hit by artillery and mortar fire on Friday on the northern border of the breakaway separatist region. “You have no idea how scary it is to hide him from the shelling.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9160283207893372}
They huddled under the stairs in their home and were unharmed through two volleys on Thursday morning and Friday afternoon, Ms. Lapygina said. The fighting between government soldiers and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine began Thursday and has not let up, with several dozen towns and villages on the government-controlled side being shelled, the authorities and aid groups said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9902697801589966}
Ukrainian military officials and the minister of defense confirmed the pickup in shelling, saying Russian-backed separatists had fired 84 times with heavy weaponry on Thursday and Friday. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8528625965118408}
Eastern Ukraine, poor, remote and stuck in a grinding, eight-year-old war, is now looking increasingly like the flash point that could ignite a wider conflict. That fear was only reinforced by a video message from Russian separatists on Friday that warned without evidence of an impending Ukrainian military offensive and urged residents in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic to evacuate to Russia. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9281464219093323}
The video was denounced by Kyiv as a baseless provocation. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7208837866783142}
Western governments have issued warnings on virtually a daily basis of the risks of a Russian invasion, after the Kremlin massed troops near Ukraine’s borders and demanded sweeping security concessions from NATO and the United States, which were largely rejected. Russian officials say they have no plans to invade but have not slowed the massing of what Western officials say are as many as 190,000 troops around Ukraine’s borders. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9892407059669495}
U.S. officials said they were keeping a close watch on the violence in eastern Ukraine, out of concern that Russia could use the escalation and the danger it poses to ethnic Russians and other civilians as a pretext to invade. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8212715983390808}
Russian officials present a starkly different view of the fighting in the east. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said on Friday that Moscow was concerned about “a sharp increase in shelling in eastern Ukraine,” which he blamed on the Ukrainian forces. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9262568354606628}
“The Kyiv regime has been violating its responsibilities for several years,” he said. “Every time we agree on new measures to help impose a cease-fire, Kyiv sabotages them.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6729484796524048}
Out in eastern Ukraine, a cold rain fell on lingering patches of snow, and few people ventured out Friday on the streets in villages along the northern edge of the line of contact that separates the two sides. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9134178757667542}
Explosions rang out from time to time, as the combatants exchanged fire. “It makes you think maybe it’s time to run,” said Tatyana Neiman, a nurse and single mother in the village of Vrubivka, surveying the blown-out windows of her house after a shell landed nearby. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8125341534614563}
Fortunately, it hit while she was on a work shift and her 10-year-old son, Bogdan, was quarantining with Covid at a friend’s home. “I am on my own,” she said. “I am raising him on my own. And now he is afraid.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8178526759147644}
A total of 12 houses in the village were damaged by shelling Friday morning, said Proliska, a local nongovernmental group affiliated with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which was providing aid to affected families throughout the day. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8230136632919312}
A few doors away, Valentina Melnichenko, 72, a retired warehouse clerk, was watching television Friday morning when a shell landed in her back yard, obliterating a small brick outbuilding. Her husband, who died a few years ago, had built it, she said. “Now, it’s destroyed,” she said, with tears in her eyes. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.7611212730407715}
Impact craters, about a yard deep and encircled by sprays of black earth on the snow, pocked yards and the playground of a school. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7984447479248047}
Explosions had sheared branches from trees and shattered windows. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6258907318115234}
Olena Yaryna, the principal of the town’s school, said the shell hit the playground at about 10:30 a.m., breaking windows but doing little other damage. She and the teachers herded the children into the hallways, away from the windows, and had them lie flat on the floor. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9740257859230042}
“That’s how we lived through it,” Ms. Yarnya said. “I absolutely don’t understand why they shelled us.” She added, “The children got very scared and the parents even more.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7937759160995483}
Fighting in eastern Ukraine is not unusual, with periodic flare-ups throughout the war years. Yet, local people say the recent increase is the most severe in two years, since a tentative and oft-violated cease-fire took effect. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6478926539421082}
And it comes amid an escalation that has seen Russia announce major military exercises this weekend that will feature the launch of ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as a test of its strategic nuclear forces — the land-based launchers, bombers and warships used to deliver nuclear weapons — and naval exercises on the Black Sea. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9484449625015259}
The Defense Ministry said the drills were planned in advance, and the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, denied that they were intended to raise tensions. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7224574089050293}
But they are coming at a critical juncture in the standoff over Ukraine. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.9313090443611145}
“People are scared,” said Vera Voitenko, 62, a Red Cross volunteer in the village of Novotoshkivske, about a mile from the frontline. She said people would leave if they could, “but who is waiting for us, and where?” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9297136068344116}
The deputy principal of the school in this village, Natalia Dotsenko, said she was woken by an artillery barrage early Thursday morning. Though occasional explosions are commonplace near the front, she said the sustained firing was different, adding: “We understand something dangerous is coming.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.878247082233429}
But she said there was nothing more they could do to prepare for the onslaught, if it should come. The children had been drilled: Three siren blasts mean fire, and that they should leave the building; one long siren means incoming artillery fire, and that they should hurry to the basement bomb shelter. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8011578917503357}
Older children are instructed to grab first graders and kindergartners under the armpits and carry them into the basement. In artillery drills and several instances of actual, incoming artillery, the students performed well, Ms. Dotsenko said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9771968722343445}
Her face was pinched with worry as she described the drill, and she nervously clenched her hands. “You cannot explain fear with words,” she said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6158028244972229}
Out on the streets, muddy rivulets flowed between potholes. Many of the two- and three-story brick buildings bore the scars of earlier artillery strikes. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8635690808296204}
Friday morning, as artillery fire echoed through the town, Sofia Sakhibgarayeva, 55, a house cleaner wearing a red hat, leopard print coat and purple mittens, walked up the middle of the deserted street, saying she was going grocery shopping. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.7191829681396484}
“It’s hard on the nerves,” she admitted, but said she didn’t want to succumb to worry. “Look at my mittens,” she said. “Don’t you think they are pretty?” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5222092866897583}

NOVOTOSHKIVSKE, Ukraine — Artillery shells struck a ring of frontline towns in eastern Ukraine Friday, blowing out windows, hitting schools, homes and military positions — and stirring fears that the escalation here is only the prelude to direct Russian military action. “I have a small baby,” said Nadya Lapygina, a resident of Staryi Aidar, one of several dozen towns hit by artillery and mortar fire on Friday on the northern border of the breakaway separatist region. “You have no idea how scary it is to hide him from the shelling.” They huddled under the stairs in their home and were unharmed through two volleys on Thursday morning and Friday afternoon, Ms. Lapygina said. The fighting between government soldiers and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine began Thursday and has not let up, with several dozen towns and villages on the government-controlled side being shelled, the authorities and aid groups said. Ukrainian military officials and the minister of defense confirmed the pickup in shelling, saying Russian-backed separatists had fired 84 times with heavy weaponry on Thursday and Friday. Eastern Ukraine, poor, remote and stuck in a grinding, eight-year-old war, is now looking increasingly like the flash point that could ignite a wider conflict. That fear was only reinforced by a video message from Russian separatists on Friday that warned without evidence of an impending Ukrainian military offensive and urged residents in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic to evacuate to Russia. Evidence The video was denounced by Kyiv as a baseless provocation. Claim Western governments have issued warnings on virtually a daily basis of the risks of a Russian invasion, after the Kremlin massed troops near Ukraine’s borders and demanded sweeping security concessions from NATO and the United States, which were largely rejected. Russian officials say they have no plans to invade but have not slowed the massing of what Western officials say are as many as 190,000 troops around Ukraine’s borders. U.S. officials said they were keeping a close watch on the violence in eastern Ukraine, out of concern that Russia could use the escalation and the danger it poses to ethnic Russians and other civilians as a pretext to invade. Russian officials present a starkly different view of the fighting in the east. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said on Friday that Moscow was concerned about “a sharp increase in shelling in eastern Ukraine,” which he blamed on the Ukrainian forces. “The Kyiv regime has been violating its responsibilities for several years,” he said. “Every time we agree on new measures to help impose a cease-fire, Kyiv sabotages them.” Out in eastern Ukraine, a cold rain fell on lingering patches of snow, and few people ventured out Friday on the streets in villages along the northern edge of the line of contact that separates the two sides. Explosions rang out from time to time, as the combatants exchanged fire. “It makes you think maybe it’s time to run,” said Tatyana Neiman, a nurse and single mother in the village of Vrubivka, surveying the blown-out windows of her house after a shell landed nearby. Fortunately, it hit while she was on a work shift and her 10-year-old son, Bogdan, was quarantining with Covid at a friend’s home. “I am on my own,” she said. “I am raising him on my own. And now he is afraid.” A total of 12 houses in the village were damaged by shelling Friday morning, said Proliska, a local nongovernmental group affiliated with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which was providing aid to affected families throughout the day. Evidence A few doors away, Valentina Melnichenko, 72, a retired warehouse clerk, was watching television Friday morning when a shell landed in her back yard, obliterating a small brick outbuilding. Her husband, who died a few years ago, had built it, she said. “Now, it’s destroyed,” she said, with tears in her eyes. Lead Impact craters, about a yard deep and encircled by sprays of black earth on the snow, pocked yards and the playground of a school. Evidence Explosions had sheared branches from trees and shattered windows. Claim Olena Yaryna, the principal of the town’s school, said the shell hit the playground at about 10:30 a.m., breaking windows but doing little other damage. She and the teachers herded the children into the hallways, away from the windows, and had them lie flat on the floor. “That’s how we lived through it,” Ms. Yarnya said. “I absolutely don’t understand why they shelled us.” She added, “The children got very scared and the parents even more.” Fighting in eastern Ukraine is not unusual, with periodic flare-ups throughout the war years. Yet, local people say the recent increase is the most severe in two years, since a tentative and oft-violated cease-fire took effect. And it comes amid an escalation that has seen Russia announce major military exercises this weekend that will feature the launch of ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as a test of its strategic nuclear forces — the land-based launchers, bombers and warships used to deliver nuclear weapons — and naval exercises on the Black Sea. The Defense Ministry said the drills were planned in advance, and the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, denied that they were intended to raise tensions. Evidence But they are coming at a critical juncture in the standoff over Ukraine. Rebuttal “People are scared,” said Vera Voitenko, 62, a Red Cross volunteer in the village of Novotoshkivske, about a mile from the frontline. She said people would leave if they could, “but who is waiting for us, and where?” The deputy principal of the school in this village, Natalia Dotsenko, said she was woken by an artillery barrage early Thursday morning. Though occasional explosions are commonplace near the front, she said the sustained firing was different, adding: “We understand something dangerous is coming.” Evidence But she said there was nothing more they could do to prepare for the onslaught, if it should come. The children had been drilled: Three siren blasts mean fire, and that they should leave the building; one long siren means incoming artillery fire, and that they should hurry to the basement bomb shelter. Rebuttal Older children are instructed to grab first graders and kindergartners under the armpits and carry them into the basement. In artillery drills and several instances of actual, incoming artillery, the students performed well, Ms. Dotsenko said. Her face was pinched with worry as she described the drill, and she nervously clenched her hands. “You cannot explain fear with words,” she said. Out on the streets, muddy rivulets flowed between potholes. Many of the two- and three-story brick buildings bore the scars of earlier artillery strikes. Evidence Friday morning, as artillery fire echoed through the town, Sofia Sakhibgarayeva, 55, a house cleaner wearing a red hat, leopard print coat and purple mittens, walked up the middle of the deserted street, saying she was going grocery shopping. Lead “It’s hard on the nerves,” she admitted, but said she didn’t want to succumb to worry. “Look at my mittens,” she said. “Don’t you think they are pretty?” Evidence

nytimes\ukraine-russia-us-troops.txt

Using custom data configuration default-74b4b8063e7fb116

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-74b4b8063e7fb116\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-74b4b8063e7fb116\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

In the last 48 hours, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and his officials say they have ordered back a good number of troops who were engaged in military exercises on the border with Ukraine. But there hasn’t been a lot of change on the ground. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9202649593353271}
Since the beginning of the standoff, President Biden has been clear that he will not allow American troops to come into direct combat with Russians. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5657367706298828}
Why has the U.S., a country that has intervened all over the world in various contexts, taken that powerful option off the table? {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.44258826971054077}
David E. Sanger, a White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.46101829409599304}
While recent Russian rhetoric has stoked hopes of a diplomatic solution, U.S. and NATO officials have accused Moscow of further building up troops. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3470395505428314}
President Biden’s opposition to sending U.S. forces into Ukraine reflects the mood of a war-wary Washington, as well as concerns about Russia’s nuclear arsenal. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.31126001477241516}
Here’s a guide to the causes behind the Ukraine crisis and where it might be headed. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6709575057029724}

In the last 48 hours, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and his officials say they have ordered back a good number of troops who were engaged in military exercises on the border with Ukraine. But there hasn’t been a lot of change on the ground. Evidence Since the beginning of the standoff, President Biden has been clear that he will not allow American troops to come into direct combat with Russians. Why has the U.S., a country that has intervened all over the world in various contexts, taken that powerful option off the table? David E. Sanger, a White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times. While recent Russian rhetoric has stoked hopes of a diplomatic solution, U.S. and NATO officials have accused Moscow of further building up troops. President Biden’s opposition to sending U.S. forces into Ukraine reflects the mood of a war-wary Washington, as well as concerns about Russia’s nuclear arsenal. Here’s a guide to the causes behind the Ukraine crisis and where it might be headed. Claim

nytimes\us-history-censorship.txt

Using custom data configuration default-3f4ea0fcc0049816

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-3f4ea0fcc0049816\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-3f4ea0fcc0049816\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

There is a dangerous censoriousness pulsing through American society. In small towns and big cities alike, would-be commissars are fighting, in the name of a distinct minority of Americans, to stifle open discussion and impose their views on the community at large. Dissenters, when they speak out, are hounded, ostracized and sometimes even forced from their jobs. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7765783667564392}
Defenders of this push for censorship say they are simply working to protect the nation’s children from prejudice, psychological distress and inappropriate material. “To say there were slaves is one thing, but to talk in detail about how slaves were treated, and with photos, is another,” said Tina Descovich, a leader of Moms for Liberty, a conservative group that seeks to enshrine “parental rights” into law. Descovich was speaking to The Washington Post in defense of Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who is spearheading an effort to censor educators who teach, or even raise, certain politically incorrect issues in their classrooms. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5269383192062378}
One of these bills would give parents and state regulators broad authority to ban books or teachings that cause “discomfort” in students, and would put lessons on “the Civil War, the expansion of the United States to its present boundaries, the world wars, and the civil rights movement” under careful review. Another would permit parents to sue school districts that “encourage classroom discussions” on “sexual orientation or gender identity” in “primary grade levels or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students.” Critics say this language is so broad as to effectively outlaw any discussion of L.G.B.T. people in elementary school classrooms, or at the very least, strongly discourage teachers from raising those issues, regardless of context. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9693158864974976}
Pushed by militantly conservative activists — and heeding the demands of an increasingly censorious group of conservative voters — Republican lawmakers are, in states across the country, introducing bills that suppress debate and stifle discussion in favor of the rote memorization of approved facts. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.65409255027771}
Last month, for example, the Indiana House of Representatives approved a bill — not yet signed into law — that would limit what teachers can say regarding race, history and politics in the state’s classrooms. Under the law, schools could be held liable for mentioning any one of several “divisive concepts,” including the idea that “any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish responsibility, or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual’s sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin or political affiliation.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9929469227790833}
The bill would allow parents to allege a violation, file a complaint, sue and even collect damages (up to $1,000). It would also, in the name of transparency, create curriculum review committees for parents and require schools and teachers to post lists of material on websites for parents to inspect. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9510781168937683}
In South Carolina, lawmakers have introduced a bill — known as the Freedom from Ideological Coercion and Indoctrination Act — that would prohibit any state-funded institution from stating that “a group or an individual, by virtue of his or her race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, heritage, culture, religion, or political belief is inherently racist, sexist, bigoted, ignorant, biased, fragile, oppressive, or contributive to any oppression, whether consciously or unconsciously.” If signed into law, this bill could make it illegal, for instance, for teachers and college professors in the state to criticize members of a white supremacist group since that affiliation might count as a “political belief.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9802207946777344}
Schools that “repeatedly distort or misrepresent verifiable historical facts” or “omit relevant and important context” or “advertise or promote ideologies or sociopolitical causes or organizations” could face a loss of state funding, state accreditation or tax-exempt status. As for what these violations would actually look like? The bill does not say. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9235339760780334}
The most disturbing efforts to monitor schools and teachers for wrong-think involve actual surveillance. Bills introduced in Iowa and Mississippi would install classroom cameras that would stream lessons over the internet for anyone to observe. The Iowa bill, which died in committee this week, would have forced schools to place cameras in all K-12 classrooms, except for physical education and special-needs classes. Teachers and other staff members who obstructed cameras or failed to keep them in working order would face fines of up to 5 percent of their weekly pay for each infraction. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9848957061767578}
According to PEN America, more than half of the “educational gag orders” moving through state legislatures include a mandatory punishment for those found in violation. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5347132682800293}
Opponents of these bills say that the laws don’t encourage openness or promote respect in the classroom as much as they suppress speech, intimidate teachers and open the door to harassment or worse. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.9401869177818298}
Already, in states that have actually enacted these bills, many teachers are opting for silence about certain topics, for fear of punishment. My colleagues in the newsroom have found multiple cases of teachers choosing to omit certain facts rather than run the risk of offending these laws, which are often vague and poorly written. As one history teacher in Oklahoma put it, “I am not going to let any of these laws deter me from the things that I think work best for students, but I also enjoy working with students and having a roof over my head.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9701232314109802}
Free speech, free discourse and free debate are among the great traditions of this country. They are, at this moment, under threat from a well-organized, well-funded movement of ideologues who have used both the force of the mob and their own institutional power (including that of the state itself) to impose their edicts on the public at large. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.62867271900177}
Conservative censors and their allies see, in the present moment, an opportunity to reshape society to their liking and squelch the views of those who disagree. It is up to those of us who believe in the First Amendment and free speech to take a stand for American liberty, while we still can. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.47630172967910767}

There is a dangerous censoriousness pulsing through American society. In small towns and big cities alike, would-be commissars are fighting, in the name of a distinct minority of Americans, to stifle open discussion and impose their views on the community at large. Dissenters, when they speak out, are hounded, ostracized and sometimes even forced from their jobs. Defenders of this push for censorship say they are simply working to protect the nation’s children from prejudice, psychological distress and inappropriate material. “To say there were slaves is one thing, but to talk in detail about how slaves were treated, and with photos, is another,” said Tina Descovich, a leader of Moms for Liberty, a conservative group that seeks to enshrine “parental rights” into law. Descovich was speaking to The Washington Post in defense of Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who is spearheading an effort to censor educators who teach, or even raise, certain politically incorrect issues in their classrooms. One of these bills would give parents and state regulators broad authority to ban books or teachings that cause “discomfort” in students, and would put lessons on “the Civil War, the expansion of the United States to its present boundaries, the world wars, and the civil rights movement” under careful review. Another would permit parents to sue school districts that “encourage classroom discussions” on “sexual orientation or gender identity” in “primary grade levels or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students.” Critics say this language is so broad as to effectively outlaw any discussion of L.G.B.T. people in elementary school classrooms, or at the very least, strongly discourage teachers from raising those issues, regardless of context. Pushed by militantly conservative activists — and heeding the demands of an increasingly censorious group of conservative voters — Republican lawmakers are, in states across the country, introducing bills that suppress debate and stifle discussion in favor of the rote memorization of approved facts. Last month, for example, the Indiana House of Representatives approved a bill — not yet signed into law — that would limit what teachers can say regarding race, history and politics in the state’s classrooms. Under the law, schools could be held liable for mentioning any one of several “divisive concepts,” including the idea that “any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish responsibility, or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual’s sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin or political affiliation.” The bill would allow parents to allege a violation, file a complaint, sue and even collect damages (up to $1,000). It would also, in the name of transparency, create curriculum review committees for parents and require schools and teachers to post lists of material on websites for parents to inspect. In South Carolina, lawmakers have introduced a bill — known as the Freedom from Ideological Coercion and Indoctrination Act — that would prohibit any state-funded institution from stating that “a group or an individual, by virtue of his or her race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, heritage, culture, religion, or political belief is inherently racist, sexist, bigoted, ignorant, biased, fragile, oppressive, or contributive to any oppression, whether consciously or unconsciously.” If signed into law, this bill could make it illegal, for instance, for teachers and college professors in the state to criticize members of a white supremacist group since that affiliation might count as a “political belief.” Schools that “repeatedly distort or misrepresent verifiable historical facts” or “omit relevant and important context” or “advertise or promote ideologies or sociopolitical causes or organizations” could face a loss of state funding, state accreditation or tax-exempt status. As for what these violations would actually look like? The bill does not say. The most disturbing efforts to monitor schools and teachers for wrong-think involve actual surveillance. Bills introduced in Iowa and Mississippi would install classroom cameras that would stream lessons over the internet for anyone to observe. The Iowa bill, which died in committee this week, would have forced schools to place cameras in all K-12 classrooms, except for physical education and special-needs classes. Teachers and other staff members who obstructed cameras or failed to keep them in working order would face fines of up to 5 percent of their weekly pay for each infraction. According to PEN America, more than half of the “educational gag orders” moving through state legislatures include a mandatory punishment for those found in violation. Evidence Opponents of these bills say that the laws don’t encourage openness or promote respect in the classroom as much as they suppress speech, intimidate teachers and open the door to harassment or worse. Counterclaim Already, in states that have actually enacted these bills, many teachers are opting for silence about certain topics, for fear of punishment. My colleagues in the newsroom have found multiple cases of teachers choosing to omit certain facts rather than run the risk of offending these laws, which are often vague and poorly written. As one history teacher in Oklahoma put it, “I am not going to let any of these laws deter me from the things that I think work best for students, but I also enjoy working with students and having a roof over my head.” Evidence Free speech, free discourse and free debate are among the great traditions of this country. They are, at this moment, under threat from a well-organized, well-funded movement of ideologues who have used both the force of the mob and their own institutional power (including that of the state itself) to impose their edicts on the public at large. Lead Conservative censors and their allies see, in the present moment, an opportunity to reshape society to their liking and squelch the views of those who disagree. It is up to those of us who believe in the First Amendment and free speech to take a stand for American liberty, while we still can. Evidence

nytimes\wall-street-hotel.txt

Using custom data configuration default-9170484f35a39f8a

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-9170484f35a39f8a\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-9170484f35a39f8a\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Welcome to the T List, a newsletter from the editors of T Magazine. Each week, we share things we’re eating, wearing, listening to or coveting now. Sign up here to find us in your inbox every Wednesday. And you can always reach us at tlist@nytimes.com. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.865285336971283}
In the late 18th century, the Tontine Building, on Manhattan’s Wall Street, was a tavern and coffeehouse — and the site of the New York Stock Exchange. Next month, the onetime trading center will reopen as the Wall Street Hotel, a 180-room boutique whose current owners, the Paspaleys, an Australian pearl production family, hope to make it more of a cultural hub. When it came to choosing art for the hotel, they partnered with the APY Art Centre Collective, an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to promoting Australian Aboriginal art. Examples of commissioned works — among them prints of paintings inspired by constellations by Matjangka Norris and layered land- and dreamscapes by Betty Muffler, who favors black and red ocher — appear throughout. After taking a self-guided tour, guests can have a cappuccino or cocktail in the all-day lounge, which is appointed with plush velvet seating, or explore the Financial District by complimentary Vélosophy bike. Rooms from $499, thewallsthotel.com. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9859198331832886}
The Los Angeles milliner Nick Fouquet was researching cowboy boots and pondering an expansion into footwear when he received a call from Lucchese, the revered Texas boot brand founded in 1883, about collaborating. “It was very serendipitous — a sign,” says Fouquet, who created headpieces for fashion houses Givenchy and Rochas before launching his own line a decade ago. And the partnership made sense: Both brands champion homegrown craftsmanship while aiming to update the idea of Americana. “There are an enormous number of similarities in the anatomy and construction, too. We have band blocks; they have lasts,” says Fouquet, who visited Lucchese’s archives in El Paso and saw lasts made for John Wayne, Gregory Peck and Jane Russell. In the end, the labels gave some classic Lucchese models a ’70s spin, coming up with eight new styles including stacked-heel boots in topstitched leather and tonal suede and snappy two-tone loafers, as well as a handful of printed silk neckerchiefs and (of course) cowboy-inspired hats. And yet, Fouquet promises, “the pieces will be as much at home on the streets of Paris as on a ranch.” Accessories from $240; footwear from $895, nickfouquet.com and lucchese.com. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9927794337272644}
Nicole Rudick’s illustrated biography of nouveau réalisme artist Niki de Saint Phalle, “What Is Now Known Was Once Only Imagined,” takes its title from a (perhaps intentionally) misquoted snippet of William Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” (1790) that appears in one of Saint Phalle’s typically rococo doodles. The line is also the perfect tag for the provocateur’s particular brand of 20th-century aestheticism. “I would spend my life questioning,” she wrote in a 1992 note addressed to her dead mother. “I would fall in love with the question mark.” Such voracious curiosity led to her various autodidactic pursuits as a painter, draftsperson, sculptor — she is probably best known for her Gaudí-inspired installation, “The Tarot Garden,” in Pescia Fiorentina, Tuscany — writer, filmmaker, gardener and perfumer. In her subtitle, Rudick (who has contributed to T) refers to the book as “an (auto)biography,” as it is comprised almost entirely of hundreds of Saint Phalle’s colorful sketches and a trove of her letters, essays and marginalia, in which the artist rhapsodizes on, among other things, adolescent love (she met her future husband, the writer Harry Mathews, at age 11), mental illness and the harlequin fantasies that pervaded her daily life. The result is an intimate scrapbook of the life of one of the century’s most inventive artists. $45, sigliopress.com. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9875974059104919}
Having cut her teeth at such influential galleries as Paula Cooper and Paul Kasmin, Polina Berlin is now opening her own, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. With a leafy backyard garden and abundant natural light, the 2,000-square-foot space, once the parlor floor of a townhouse, retains its homey feel. And this is fitting since Berlin hopes the gallery will foster close bonds. “The artists in Paula’s program have such admiration for each other and push each other to ignite new ideas,” says Berlin. “It would be very satisfying to have that happen in my space.” The gallery’s inaugural show, titled “Emotional Intelligence” and opening next week, features various riffs on kinship. It includes work by 10 artists, including a painting of three semiabstract nudes by Loie Hollowell and another of a figure holding an umbrella that reads “God is Gorgeous” by Shannon Cartier Lucy. Berlin sees the show as a kind of mission statement. “These artists are so sensitive to how people are treated,” she says. “And if I can in some modest way make the art world better for the people I work with, then I feel the accountability to do that.” “Emotional Intelligence” runs from Feb. 22 to March 26, polinaberlingallery.com. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.980209231376648}
When it comes to sourcing supplies for small home projects — retiling a backsplash, say, or papering a single wall — it can feel like your options are either Home Depot (practical but not necessarily inspiring) or a brand’s showroom (obscure pricing, too many choices). It’s partly for this reason that Sarah Zames and Colin Stief, of the Brooklyn-based design studio General Assembly, are opening their first store, Assembly Line, in Boerum Hill this week. The warm, light-flooded space is laid out like a home, with inviting living and dining areas, and filled with furniture and fixtures by designers whom Zames and Stief admire — upholstered oak stools by Vonnegut/Kraft, elegant chrome cabinet knobs by Fort Standard Objects — as well as a tightly edited selection of materials for renovations, which includes Calico wallpapers printed with a range of nature-inspired motifs, glossy zellige tiles from Clé and lime wash paints from Bauwerk. Unlike in many showrooms, every item in the store is clearly priced, and Zames and Stief are available for consultations by appointment. A DIYer might easily come in to look at an Elitis fabric sample but leave with a new bedside lamp — like the great options, with globby, hand-formed stone bases, by the Brooklyn maker Hannah Bigeleisen — or a plan to reimagine an entire room. 373 Atlantic Avenue, assemblyline.co. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9883437156677246}

Welcome to the T List, a newsletter from the editors of T Magazine. Each week, we share things we’re eating, wearing, listening to or coveting now. Sign up here to find us in your inbox every Wednesday. And you can always reach us at tlist@nytimes.com. Lead In the late 18th century, the Tontine Building, on Manhattan’s Wall Street, was a tavern and coffeehouse — and the site of the New York Stock Exchange. Next month, the onetime trading center will reopen as the Wall Street Hotel, a 180-room boutique whose current owners, the Paspaleys, an Australian pearl production family, hope to make it more of a cultural hub. When it came to choosing art for the hotel, they partnered with the APY Art Centre Collective, an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to promoting Australian Aboriginal art. Examples of commissioned works — among them prints of paintings inspired by constellations by Matjangka Norris and layered land- and dreamscapes by Betty Muffler, who favors black and red ocher — appear throughout. After taking a self-guided tour, guests can have a cappuccino or cocktail in the all-day lounge, which is appointed with plush velvet seating, or explore the Financial District by complimentary Vélosophy bike. Rooms from $499, thewallsthotel.com. The Los Angeles milliner Nick Fouquet was researching cowboy boots and pondering an expansion into footwear when he received a call from Lucchese, the revered Texas boot brand founded in 1883, about collaborating. “It was very serendipitous — a sign,” says Fouquet, who created headpieces for fashion houses Givenchy and Rochas before launching his own line a decade ago. And the partnership made sense: Both brands champion homegrown craftsmanship while aiming to update the idea of Americana. “There are an enormous number of similarities in the anatomy and construction, too. We have band blocks; they have lasts,” says Fouquet, who visited Lucchese’s archives in El Paso and saw lasts made for John Wayne, Gregory Peck and Jane Russell. In the end, the labels gave some classic Lucchese models a ’70s spin, coming up with eight new styles including stacked-heel boots in topstitched leather and tonal suede and snappy two-tone loafers, as well as a handful of printed silk neckerchiefs and (of course) cowboy-inspired hats. And yet, Fouquet promises, “the pieces will be as much at home on the streets of Paris as on a ranch.” Accessories from $240; footwear from $895, nickfouquet.com and lucchese.com. Nicole Rudick’s illustrated biography of nouveau réalisme artist Niki de Saint Phalle, “What Is Now Known Was Once Only Imagined,” takes its title from a (perhaps intentionally) misquoted snippet of William Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” (1790) that appears in one of Saint Phalle’s typically rococo doodles. The line is also the perfect tag for the provocateur’s particular brand of 20th-century aestheticism. “I would spend my life questioning,” she wrote in a 1992 note addressed to her dead mother. “I would fall in love with the question mark.” Such voracious curiosity led to her various autodidactic pursuits as a painter, draftsperson, sculptor — she is probably best known for her Gaudí-inspired installation, “The Tarot Garden,” in Pescia Fiorentina, Tuscany — writer, filmmaker, gardener and perfumer. In her subtitle, Rudick (who has contributed to T) refers to the book as “an (auto)biography,” as it is comprised almost entirely of hundreds of Saint Phalle’s colorful sketches and a trove of her letters, essays and marginalia, in which the artist rhapsodizes on, among other things, adolescent love (she met her future husband, the writer Harry Mathews, at age 11), mental illness and the harlequin fantasies that pervaded her daily life. The result is an intimate scrapbook of the life of one of the century’s most inventive artists. $45, sigliopress.com. Having cut her teeth at such influential galleries as Paula Cooper and Paul Kasmin, Polina Berlin is now opening her own, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. With a leafy backyard garden and abundant natural light, the 2,000-square-foot space, once the parlor floor of a townhouse, retains its homey feel. And this is fitting since Berlin hopes the gallery will foster close bonds. “The artists in Paula’s program have such admiration for each other and push each other to ignite new ideas,” says Berlin. “It would be very satisfying to have that happen in my space.” The gallery’s inaugural show, titled “Emotional Intelligence” and opening next week, features various riffs on kinship. It includes work by 10 artists, including a painting of three semiabstract nudes by Loie Hollowell and another of a figure holding an umbrella that reads “God is Gorgeous” by Shannon Cartier Lucy. Berlin sees the show as a kind of mission statement. “These artists are so sensitive to how people are treated,” she says. “And if I can in some modest way make the art world better for the people I work with, then I feel the accountability to do that.” “Emotional Intelligence” runs from Feb. 22 to March 26, polinaberlingallery.com. When it comes to sourcing supplies for small home projects — retiling a backsplash, say, or papering a single wall — it can feel like your options are either Home Depot (practical but not necessarily inspiring) or a brand’s showroom (obscure pricing, too many choices). It’s partly for this reason that Sarah Zames and Colin Stief, of the Brooklyn-based design studio General Assembly, are opening their first store, Assembly Line, in Boerum Hill this week. The warm, light-flooded space is laid out like a home, with inviting living and dining areas, and filled with furniture and fixtures by designers whom Zames and Stief admire — upholstered oak stools by Vonnegut/Kraft, elegant chrome cabinet knobs by Fort Standard Objects — as well as a tightly edited selection of materials for renovations, which includes Calico wallpapers printed with a range of nature-inspired motifs, glossy zellige tiles from Clé and lime wash paints from Bauwerk. Unlike in many showrooms, every item in the store is clearly priced, and Zames and Stief are available for consultations by appointment. A DIYer might easily come in to look at an Elitis fabric sample but leave with a new bedside lamp — like the great options, with globby, hand-formed stone bases, by the Brooklyn maker Hannah Bigeleisen — or a plan to reimagine an entire room. 373 Atlantic Avenue, assemblyline.co. Evidence

nytimes\walter-dellinger-law-supreme-court.txt

Using custom data configuration default-3eac1aaab25160d0

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-3eac1aaab25160d0\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-3eac1aaab25160d0\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

It would’ve been a hell of a road trip. The plan was to fly to North Carolina in late March, then drive four hours to a small town on the inner banks, where one of America’s founding fathers, James Wilson, spent his last, desperate days hiding out in a local tavern, on the run from the law and his creditors. I am writing a book about Wilson’s singular life and I need to spend some time in the place where he died. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8446221351623535}
My traveling companion was to be Walter Dellinger, the former acting solicitor general, who was born and raised in North Carolina and spent decades teaching constitutional law at Duke Law School. I had reached out to Mr. Dellinger last month to propose he join me — a lark, I thought. Mr. Dellinger was 80 and not in the best of health. He had spent the previous several years caring for his wife of a lifetime, Anne, as dementia took first her mind and then, last spring, her life. He was heartbroken and exhausted. To my surprise, he accepted immediately. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9119837284088135}
For me it was a no-brainer: the chance to spend uninterrupted days in the presence of one of the nation’s most captivating constitutional scholars, and one of the greatest appellate lawyers of his day. What I didn’t fully appreciate, not until I learned of his death early Wednesday morning, was how much the prospect of such a trip excited Mr. Dellinger, too. He was a deeply curious soul, filled with a genuine love of the Constitution but also an openhearted desire to learn more. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8594430685043335}
Eighty years old is not young, and yet the news of Mr. Dellinger’s death still came as a disorienting shock — like the sudden loss of a parent. “I feel like an orphan today,” Garrett Epps, a longtime Supreme Court analyst and one of Mr. Dellinger’s former law students, wrote on Twitter. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7426440119743347}
Mr. Dellinger was a rarity in American law. He was as revered as he was outsized, as warmhearted as he could be intimidating. In his smooth, unhurried Southern drawl you heard his origin story — a “poor white kid from North Carolina,” as he put it, whose widowed mother worked selling men’s clothing to help put him through law school. After a clerkship with the Supreme Court justice Hugo Black, a famous progressive white Southerner, he went to work at Paul Weiss, a Jewish-owned law firm in New York, because, he later said, he was troubled that the other major New York firms refused even to interview Jewish law students for jobs. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9793269634246826}
After more than 20 years teaching at Duke, Mr. Dellinger was tapped by President Bill Clinton to lead the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal advice to the executive branch. In 1996, he was named acting solicitor general, giving him the opportunity to argue regularly at the Supreme Court on behalf of the White House. “When he said things, the justices paid attention,” Mr. Epps told me. “There’s a small group like that; it’s not particularly ideological. Walter had that role.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9602025747299194}
But what distinguished Mr. Dellinger was not just his daunting intellect and charisma; it was the generosity of spirit that showed in his mentoring of hundreds if not thousands of young law students, staff members and others who learned from, and often came to share, his inclusive vision of American democracy. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8131662011146545}
“There is almost no one in the last 100 years who’s had a more profound impact on the law who didn’t serve on the Supreme Court,” said Neal Katyal, who met Mr. Dellinger as a young lawyer and later served as President Barack Obama’s acting solicitor general, the same job Mr. Dellinger held under Mr. Clinton. “He had this expansive, generous view of the law and what the Constitution means.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9728715419769287}
When Mr. Katyal was tasked with defending President Obama’s signature health care law, the Affordable Care Act, he relied on Mr. Dellinger’s writings and ideas to make the case, which he ultimately won. “There’s a whole strain of constitutional scholarship which views the Constitution as a set of rigid constraints,” he said. “Walter’s scholarship pushed back on that idea, saying the Constitution is a pragmatic and flexible document intended to empower government to deal with problems.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9296962022781372}
The Constitution was also the product of a “literally unspeakable compromise” with slaveholders, as Mr. Dellinger was never shy to say, and needed to be understood in that light. In a guest essay for The Times last month, he came out strongly in support of President Biden’s public vow to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court. Rejecting Republican complaints that Mr. Biden’s promise was somehow “offensive,” Mr. Dellinger cited the “long and important tradition of presidents taking into consideration the demographic characteristics of prospective justices.” “Our history shows that the process of reaching out to expand the personal backgrounds of the justices has often produced stellar jurists who made historic contributions to the court and our judicial system,” he added. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9831913113594055}
Pamela Karlan, a law professor at Stanford University, recalled Mr. Dellinger’s fondness for a poem by Walt Whitman, “The Wound-Dresser,” that is engraved in the subway station she used when she would visit him in Washington. The poem is about Whitman’s time as a volunteer nurse during the Civil War. “I always thought of Walter as trying to dress the American wound of race,” she said. “He was in there to heal the world.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9611899852752686}
Poetry was only one art form that moved him. He followed the television series “Mad Men” closely enough to post lengthy late-night comments to online forums about the show. One of his comments led to a round table discussion, hosted by The Wall Street Journal, in which Mr. Dellinger first explained his affection for “Mad Men,” and then — ever the lawyer — pointed out that a chronological gap between seasons had skipped completely over two major national events: the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and that year’s brutal murder of three civil-rights workers in Mississippi. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9871668219566345}
In 1988, Mr. Dellinger was selected to be a fellow at the National Humanities Center, along with Rita Dove, who would later be named U.S. poet laureate. “I remember being so impressed at how authentic he was; a Southerner deeply committed to civil rights,” Ms. Dove told me. “He was always a straight shooter, but his humor was the humor of the blues. You laughed to keep from crying.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8263424038887024}
Although I was never Mr. Dellinger’s student, I felt as though I earned an honorary degree through our countless email exchanges and hours of phone calls over the years. What struck me in every exchange was his love — unabashed and not at all possessive — of the ideals underlying American democracy. He held neither jealousy of those who knew more than he did nor disdain for those, like me, who knew far less. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8089708089828491}
I called him recently for a piece I was writing on the Equal Rights Amendment, which would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex. There is a long-running and legally complex dispute over whether the amendment should already be considered part of the Constitution. I found myself torn, but Mr. Dellinger didn’t. His take was, as always, informed by both deep legal training and good common sense. “The tiebreaker for me is the difficulty of amending the Constitution. There are so many ways of making the process harder. My point is, it’s goddamn hard enough.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5785797834396362}
There is never a good time to lose someone like Walter Dellinger. It is especially gutting right now, as a turbocharged right-wing supermajority on the Supreme Court gears up to obliterate decades of precedent that had pointed the way, however imperfectly, toward a fairer, more equal and more inclusive America. But Mr. Dellinger, a fierce liberal who spent much of his life deep in the former confederacy, was always keenly aware of the forces he was up against. Thankfully he trained a generation of lawyers to think, and to fight, the way he did. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7430842518806458}

It would’ve been a hell of a road trip. The plan was to fly to North Carolina in late March, then drive four hours to a small town on the inner banks, where one of America’s founding fathers, James Wilson, spent his last, desperate days hiding out in a local tavern, on the run from the law and his creditors. I am writing a book about Wilson’s singular life and I need to spend some time in the place where he died. My traveling companion was to be Walter Dellinger, the former acting solicitor general, who was born and raised in North Carolina and spent decades teaching constitutional law at Duke Law School. I had reached out to Mr. Dellinger last month to propose he join me — a lark, I thought. Mr. Dellinger was 80 and not in the best of health. He had spent the previous several years caring for his wife of a lifetime, Anne, as dementia took first her mind and then, last spring, her life. He was heartbroken and exhausted. To my surprise, he accepted immediately. For me it was a no-brainer: the chance to spend uninterrupted days in the presence of one of the nation’s most captivating constitutional scholars, and one of the greatest appellate lawyers of his day. What I didn’t fully appreciate, not until I learned of his death early Wednesday morning, was how much the prospect of such a trip excited Mr. Dellinger, too. He was a deeply curious soul, filled with a genuine love of the Constitution but also an openhearted desire to learn more. Eighty years old is not young, and yet the news of Mr. Dellinger’s death still came as a disorienting shock — like the sudden loss of a parent. “I feel like an orphan today,” Garrett Epps, a longtime Supreme Court analyst and one of Mr. Dellinger’s former law students, wrote on Twitter. Mr. Dellinger was a rarity in American law. He was as revered as he was outsized, as warmhearted as he could be intimidating. In his smooth, unhurried Southern drawl you heard his origin story — a “poor white kid from North Carolina,” as he put it, whose widowed mother worked selling men’s clothing to help put him through law school. After a clerkship with the Supreme Court justice Hugo Black, a famous progressive white Southerner, he went to work at Paul Weiss, a Jewish-owned law firm in New York, because, he later said, he was troubled that the other major New York firms refused even to interview Jewish law students for jobs. After more than 20 years teaching at Duke, Mr. Dellinger was tapped by President Bill Clinton to lead the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal advice to the executive branch. In 1996, he was named acting solicitor general, giving him the opportunity to argue regularly at the Supreme Court on behalf of the White House. “When he said things, the justices paid attention,” Mr. Epps told me. “There’s a small group like that; it’s not particularly ideological. Walter had that role.” Evidence But what distinguished Mr. Dellinger was not just his daunting intellect and charisma; it was the generosity of spirit that showed in his mentoring of hundreds if not thousands of young law students, staff members and others who learned from, and often came to share, his inclusive vision of American democracy. Rebuttal “There is almost no one in the last 100 years who’s had a more profound impact on the law who didn’t serve on the Supreme Court,” said Neal Katyal, who met Mr. Dellinger as a young lawyer and later served as President Barack Obama’s acting solicitor general, the same job Mr. Dellinger held under Mr. Clinton. “He had this expansive, generous view of the law and what the Constitution means.” When Mr. Katyal was tasked with defending President Obama’s signature health care law, the Affordable Care Act, he relied on Mr. Dellinger’s writings and ideas to make the case, which he ultimately won. “There’s a whole strain of constitutional scholarship which views the Constitution as a set of rigid constraints,” he said. “Walter’s scholarship pushed back on that idea, saying the Constitution is a pragmatic and flexible document intended to empower government to deal with problems.” The Constitution was also the product of a “literally unspeakable compromise” with slaveholders, as Mr. Dellinger was never shy to say, and needed to be understood in that light. In a guest essay for The Times last month, he came out strongly in support of President Biden’s public vow to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court. Rejecting Republican complaints that Mr. Biden’s promise was somehow “offensive,” Mr. Dellinger cited the “long and important tradition of presidents taking into consideration the demographic characteristics of prospective justices.” “Our history shows that the process of reaching out to expand the personal backgrounds of the justices has often produced stellar jurists who made historic contributions to the court and our judicial system,” he added. Pamela Karlan, a law professor at Stanford University, recalled Mr. Dellinger’s fondness for a poem by Walt Whitman, “The Wound-Dresser,” that is engraved in the subway station she used when she would visit him in Washington. The poem is about Whitman’s time as a volunteer nurse during the Civil War. “I always thought of Walter as trying to dress the American wound of race,” she said. “He was in there to heal the world.” Poetry was only one art form that moved him. He followed the television series “Mad Men” closely enough to post lengthy late-night comments to online forums about the show. One of his comments led to a round table discussion, hosted by The Wall Street Journal, in which Mr. Dellinger first explained his affection for “Mad Men,” and then — ever the lawyer — pointed out that a chronological gap between seasons had skipped completely over two major national events: the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and that year’s brutal murder of three civil-rights workers in Mississippi. In 1988, Mr. Dellinger was selected to be a fellow at the National Humanities Center, along with Rita Dove, who would later be named U.S. poet laureate. “I remember being so impressed at how authentic he was; a Southerner deeply committed to civil rights,” Ms. Dove told me. “He was always a straight shooter, but his humor was the humor of the blues. You laughed to keep from crying.” Although I was never Mr. Dellinger’s student, I felt as though I earned an honorary degree through our countless email exchanges and hours of phone calls over the years. What struck me in every exchange was his love — unabashed and not at all possessive — of the ideals underlying American democracy. He held neither jealousy of those who knew more than he did nor disdain for those, like me, who knew far less. I called him recently for a piece I was writing on the Equal Rights Amendment, which would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex. There is a long-running and legally complex dispute over whether the amendment should already be considered part of the Constitution. I found myself torn, but Mr. Dellinger didn’t. His take was, as always, informed by both deep legal training and good common sense. “The tiebreaker for me is the difficulty of amending the Constitution. There are so many ways of making the process harder. My point is, it’s goddamn hard enough.” There is never a good time to lose someone like Walter Dellinger. It is especially gutting right now, as a turbocharged right-wing supermajority on the Supreme Court gears up to obliterate decades of precedent that had pointed the way, however imperfectly, toward a fairer, more equal and more inclusive America. But Mr. Dellinger, a fierce liberal who spent much of his life deep in the former confederacy, was always keenly aware of the forces he was up against. Thankfully he trained a generation of lawyers to think, and to fight, the way he did. Evidence

nytimes\watches-obscure-brands-switzerland.txt

Using custom data configuration default-c5f566e17e8f4d69

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-c5f566e17e8f4d69\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-c5f566e17e8f4d69\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

In 2012, when Scott Heileson turned 35, he decided it was time to buy a nice watch. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6209995150566101}
Like millions of people before and after him, he gravitated to Rolex, deciding he wanted an Explorer 1016 model from 1977, the year he was born. The watch proved elusive, but the search ignited a passion for wristwatches that Mr. Heileson hadn’t realized he had. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8639148473739624}
“Very quickly, I went down this rabbit hole of military watches,” Mr. Heileson, a patent lawyer based in Northern California, recalled during a recent phone call. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6445543766021729}
Specifically, he developed an interest in timepieces that had been issued to members of the French Navy, also known as Marine Nationale watches. The hunt led him to eBay, various online watch forums and what he described as “French Craigslist-type things.” Eventually, Mr. Heileson landed on a little-known brand called Z.R.C., for Zuccolo Rochet & Cie, a Swiss watch firm founded in 1904 that, like many of its peers, fell on hard times in the 1970s when the advent of cheap Japanese quartz technology put 60,000 mechanical watchmakers in Switzerland out of work. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9939005374908447}
Swiss watch history is littered with great brands that did not survive, or barely survived, the 20th century. “Some didn’t read the signs about changing times,” Aurel Bacs, the Geneva-based auctioneer who heads Phillips’s watch department, said on a recent video call. “Some were bought up and crashed. Some struggled with competition from Asia.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9714794158935547}
Now, however, spurred by the booming market for vintage timepieces — not to mention skyrocketing prices and scarce availability for marquee brands such as Rolex, Audemars Piguet and Patek Philippe — watch enthusiasts are increasingly setting their sights on what William Rohr, the New York-based founder of the boutique watch brand Massena LAB, called “the dead brands society.” {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.6012114882469177}
A short list of members might include Eterna, an early leader in manufacturing automatic movements; Mathey-Tissot, a chronograph specialist founded in 1886 in the Swiss Jura region; Enicar, a 20th-century maker of rugged sport watches famed for its Sherpa series; and Universal Genève, the brand whose Polerouter model gave the celebrated designer Gerald Genta his start. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.983537495136261}
“There’s a certain nostalgia for these brands because they don’t exist anymore,” Mr. Rohr said. (He, too, is a fan: In 2020, Massena LAB introduced a chronograph called the Uni-Racer, an homage to the Uni-Compax “Big Eye” model made by Universal Genève in the mid-1960s.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9223815202713013}
Cameron Barr, founder and chief executive of Craft & Tailored, a vintage watch dealer in Los Angeles, said the “bump in interest” in some long-forgotten makers was a reflection of their timeless designs as well as their accessibility, both in terms of pricing and availability. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7961691617965698}
As an example, he referred to the Swiss brand Nivada Grenchen: “They possess that classic late ’60s-’70s sport watch design that’s evergreen,” Mr. Barr said. “Most of these watches sit between $3,500 and $6,500, depending on movement. They’re not cheap, but they’re also not $25,000. You can have fun with it, not be so serious.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9935217499732971}
Now, partly owing to their popularity on Instagram, some vintage models from obscure brands have the potential to “catch fire and spike in value, like a lesser stock on Nasdaq,” said Eric Wind, a vintage watch dealer based in Palm Beach, Fla. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5217013955116272}
“With Universal Genève, there were watches that were trading for $3,800, but three years later were trading for $40,000,” he added. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5953447222709656}
Even Z.R.C., the little-known brand that Mr. Heileson began to collect, has seen its vintage watches rise in value: For example, a Z.R.C. Securicode model from the early 1960s that likely retailed for less than $100 sold for a total of 35,750 euros ($40,575), including fees, at an online auction in November 2020. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.985577404499054}
A common misconception among would-be buyers of older brands is that the timepieces are difficult to service. “But in fact, many of these watches use the exact same chronograph movements as in the Rolex Daytona, the Valjoux 72, so it’s just as easy to service,” Mr. Wind said. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.462527871131897}
If brands were using the same movements, why did some makers triumph and others collapse? Nicholas Manousos, executive director of the Horological Society of New York, said it “boils down to fashion and marketing.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.750683069229126}
“Every mechanical watch has a barrel, a gear train that you wind up, an escapement, a balance wheel and, on the dial, some hands to tell the time,” Mr. Manousos said. “On top of that, you have to tell some sort of marketing story so that people want to buy it.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9553447365760803}
Another reason some brands stumbled, said Nathalie Wheldon, owner of Hovigs Supply House, a Los Angeles-based supplier of watch components, has to do with the way they positioned themselves in the years just before quartz watches began flooding the market. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.41858693957328796}
“Brands that focused on watches for the masses were the ones that got eaten up the most — because that’s what quartz did, it made owning a watch much more democratic,” she said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5557833313941956}
In a sign that history really does come full circle, some entrepreneurs are now trying to reinvent brands that faltered in the 1970s — as mechanical watchmakers for the masses. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5333474278450012}
Guillaume Laidet is chief among them. The Paris-based entrepreneur is working with three brands on ambitious comeback efforts. In 2018, he teamed with the Hong Kong-based Montrichard Group to acquire the rights to the Nivada Grenchen logo and name from a Mexican company, Grupo Industrial Omega SA de CV. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9887765049934387}
Two years later, he and his partners at the French-owned Korius Group bought the Swiss movement maker Excelsior Park from the retailer Tourneau. And in November, he began consulting with the Promobe group in Luxembourg to oversee the rebirth of Vulcain, whose Cricket alarm watch earned the nickname “The President’s Watch” because many American presidents have owned one. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9859799742698669}
Mr. Laidet said he wanted to produce affordable modern collections for each label, centered on unabashed re-creations of their best sellers. “It’s easier to take a brand that already has a cool history than to create your own brand,” he said on a recent phone call. (Indeed, Mr. Laidet’s title at Nivada Grenchen is “co-refounder” and chief brand officer.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9811211228370667}
“A lot of brands just need a refresh and to be aligned with the market,” he added. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5988178253173828}
By that Mr. Laidet meant the watches must be priced just right, a delicate balance of costs, profit and demand: He said that was in the $750 to $2,500 range for Nivada Grenchen, around $2,275 for Excelsior Park, and as much as $6,800 for Vulcain {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.932405412197113}
To meet those price points, he is relying on off-the-shelf manual-wind chronograph movements from Sellita, a supplier based in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. “I would love to bring back the EP40 chronograph caliber from Excelsior Park, but I would need a pot of cash and it wouldn’t work as well as the Sellita,” he said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5284937620162964}
Mr. Laidet’s approach is hardly novel. In the 1980s, on the eve of the mechanical watchmaking renaissance, marketers such as Jean-Claude Biver — the former Omega salesman who acquired the rights to the brand name Blancpain for about $16,000 in 1981 and sold the brand to the Swatch Group in 1992 for $43 million — proved that there was money to be made in reviving dead brands. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8858845233917236}
The rebirth of Panerai in the late 1990s and its subsequent acquisition by Compagnie Financière Richemont in 1997 confirmed the wisdom of such a strategy. Once an obscure maker of timepieces for elite divers in the Italian navy, the Florence, Italy-based brand was resurrected in 1995, when Sylvester Stallone, in Rome to shoot a film, discovered its Luminor model. He commissioned a limited edition with his signature, generating publicity that vaulted the brand into the horological spotlight. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.981663167476654}
“They made a few watches in the ’60s, some in the ’70s and then they more or less said goodbye until somebody said, ‘Hey, that’s a great name,’” Mr. Bacs said. “At the time they revived it, I don’t think they thought it would be such a big thing one day.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9170274138450623}
Yet for every success story like Blancpain or Panerai, there are scores of brands languishing in horological purgatory. Some once-celebrated makers, including the Swiss brand Cortébert, went bankrupt during the quartz crisis and lost the rights to their names, which now are used to peddle cheap quartz styles. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6582645177841187}
Others were acquired by Chinese companies (in Eterna’s case, by Citychamp Watch & Jewellery Group of Hong Kong, which, in 2013, also acquired Corum, another Swiss maker) and continue to make watches, but have failed to recapture their past glory. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8516584038734436}
Some of the greatest American watchmakers of the past 150 years have had similar experiences. Companies such as Elgin, Gruen and Waltham have been acquired, restarted and traded, but now are not much more than brand names awaiting a savvy marketer or cash-rich opportunist to resuscitate them. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9324860572814941}
Of all the great 20th century brands that lost their way, however, there is one (you may have a good guess by now) whose fate continues to torment vintage watch lovers. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5662956237792969}
“Universal Genève is the one that breaks my heart,” Ms. Wheldon wrote in an email following her phone interview. “Its historical ties to Hermès, Patek Philippe (through Henri Stern) and Gerald Genta are all reasons to love this brand.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6145122647285461}
Mr. Laidet said he tried last summer, and failed, to acquire the rights to Universal Genève, which was purchased in 1989 by Stelux, a Hong Kong-based investment group. It tried to revive the brand about two decades ago, and has done very little with it since. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8977363109588623}
But Mr. Laidet still hopes that, one day, he might be able to introduce a modern version of the Genta-designed Polerouter featuring elements, such as the micro-rotor, that have made it a darling of collectors. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.7834551930427551}
“Universal Genève would be the dream,” he said. “The unicorn.” {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.3746088743209839}

In 2012, when Scott Heileson turned 35, he decided it was time to buy a nice watch. Claim Like millions of people before and after him, he gravitated to Rolex, deciding he wanted an Explorer 1016 model from 1977, the year he was born. The watch proved elusive, but the search ignited a passion for wristwatches that Mr. Heileson hadn’t realized he had. “Very quickly, I went down this rabbit hole of military watches,” Mr. Heileson, a patent lawyer based in Northern California, recalled during a recent phone call. Specifically, he developed an interest in timepieces that had been issued to members of the French Navy, also known as Marine Nationale watches. The hunt led him to eBay, various online watch forums and what he described as “French Craigslist-type things.” Eventually, Mr. Heileson landed on a little-known brand called Z.R.C., for Zuccolo Rochet & Cie, a Swiss watch firm founded in 1904 that, like many of its peers, fell on hard times in the 1970s when the advent of cheap Japanese quartz technology put 60,000 mechanical watchmakers in Switzerland out of work. Swiss watch history is littered with great brands that did not survive, or barely survived, the 20th century. “Some didn’t read the signs about changing times,” Aurel Bacs, the Geneva-based auctioneer who heads Phillips’s watch department, said on a recent video call. “Some were bought up and crashed. Some struggled with competition from Asia.” Evidence Now, however, spurred by the booming market for vintage timepieces — not to mention skyrocketing prices and scarce availability for marquee brands such as Rolex, Audemars Piguet and Patek Philippe — watch enthusiasts are increasingly setting their sights on what William Rohr, the New York-based founder of the boutique watch brand Massena LAB, called “the dead brands society.” Rebuttal A short list of members might include Eterna, an early leader in manufacturing automatic movements; Mathey-Tissot, a chronograph specialist founded in 1886 in the Swiss Jura region; Enicar, a 20th-century maker of rugged sport watches famed for its Sherpa series; and Universal Genève, the brand whose Polerouter model gave the celebrated designer Gerald Genta his start. “There’s a certain nostalgia for these brands because they don’t exist anymore,” Mr. Rohr said. (He, too, is a fan: In 2020, Massena LAB introduced a chronograph called the Uni-Racer, an homage to the Uni-Compax “Big Eye” model made by Universal Genève in the mid-1960s.) Cameron Barr, founder and chief executive of Craft & Tailored, a vintage watch dealer in Los Angeles, said the “bump in interest” in some long-forgotten makers was a reflection of their timeless designs as well as their accessibility, both in terms of pricing and availability. As an example, he referred to the Swiss brand Nivada Grenchen: “They possess that classic late ’60s-’70s sport watch design that’s evergreen,” Mr. Barr said. “Most of these watches sit between $3,500 and $6,500, depending on movement. They’re not cheap, but they’re also not $25,000. You can have fun with it, not be so serious.” Now, partly owing to their popularity on Instagram, some vintage models from obscure brands have the potential to “catch fire and spike in value, like a lesser stock on Nasdaq,” said Eric Wind, a vintage watch dealer based in Palm Beach, Fla. “With Universal Genève, there were watches that were trading for $3,800, but three years later were trading for $40,000,” he added. Even Z.R.C., the little-known brand that Mr. Heileson began to collect, has seen its vintage watches rise in value: For example, a Z.R.C. Securicode model from the early 1960s that likely retailed for less than $100 sold for a total of 35,750 euros ($40,575), including fees, at an online auction in November 2020. Evidence A common misconception among would-be buyers of older brands is that the timepieces are difficult to service. “But in fact, many of these watches use the exact same chronograph movements as in the Rolex Daytona, the Valjoux 72, so it’s just as easy to service,” Mr. Wind said. Counterclaim If brands were using the same movements, why did some makers triumph and others collapse? Nicholas Manousos, executive director of the Horological Society of New York, said it “boils down to fashion and marketing.” “Every mechanical watch has a barrel, a gear train that you wind up, an escapement, a balance wheel and, on the dial, some hands to tell the time,” Mr. Manousos said. “On top of that, you have to tell some sort of marketing story so that people want to buy it.” Another reason some brands stumbled, said Nathalie Wheldon, owner of Hovigs Supply House, a Los Angeles-based supplier of watch components, has to do with the way they positioned themselves in the years just before quartz watches began flooding the market. “Brands that focused on watches for the masses were the ones that got eaten up the most — because that’s what quartz did, it made owning a watch much more democratic,” she said. Evidence In a sign that history really does come full circle, some entrepreneurs are now trying to reinvent brands that faltered in the 1970s — as mechanical watchmakers for the masses. Claim Guillaume Laidet is chief among them. The Paris-based entrepreneur is working with three brands on ambitious comeback efforts. In 2018, he teamed with the Hong Kong-based Montrichard Group to acquire the rights to the Nivada Grenchen logo and name from a Mexican company, Grupo Industrial Omega SA de CV. Two years later, he and his partners at the French-owned Korius Group bought the Swiss movement maker Excelsior Park from the retailer Tourneau. And in November, he began consulting with the Promobe group in Luxembourg to oversee the rebirth of Vulcain, whose Cricket alarm watch earned the nickname “The President’s Watch” because many American presidents have owned one. Mr. Laidet said he wanted to produce affordable modern collections for each label, centered on unabashed re-creations of their best sellers. “It’s easier to take a brand that already has a cool history than to create your own brand,” he said on a recent phone call. (Indeed, Mr. Laidet’s title at Nivada Grenchen is “co-refounder” and chief brand officer.) Evidence “A lot of brands just need a refresh and to be aligned with the market,” he added. Claim By that Mr. Laidet meant the watches must be priced just right, a delicate balance of costs, profit and demand: He said that was in the $750 to $2,500 range for Nivada Grenchen, around $2,275 for Excelsior Park, and as much as $6,800 for Vulcain To meet those price points, he is relying on off-the-shelf manual-wind chronograph movements from Sellita, a supplier based in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. “I would love to bring back the EP40 chronograph caliber from Excelsior Park, but I would need a pot of cash and it wouldn’t work as well as the Sellita,” he said. Mr. Laidet’s approach is hardly novel. In the 1980s, on the eve of the mechanical watchmaking renaissance, marketers such as Jean-Claude Biver — the former Omega salesman who acquired the rights to the brand name Blancpain for about $16,000 in 1981 and sold the brand to the Swatch Group in 1992 for $43 million — proved that there was money to be made in reviving dead brands. The rebirth of Panerai in the late 1990s and its subsequent acquisition by Compagnie Financière Richemont in 1997 confirmed the wisdom of such a strategy. Once an obscure maker of timepieces for elite divers in the Italian navy, the Florence, Italy-based brand was resurrected in 1995, when Sylvester Stallone, in Rome to shoot a film, discovered its Luminor model. He commissioned a limited edition with his signature, generating publicity that vaulted the brand into the horological spotlight. “They made a few watches in the ’60s, some in the ’70s and then they more or less said goodbye until somebody said, ‘Hey, that’s a great name,’” Mr. Bacs said. “At the time they revived it, I don’t think they thought it would be such a big thing one day.” Yet for every success story like Blancpain or Panerai, there are scores of brands languishing in horological purgatory. Some once-celebrated makers, including the Swiss brand Cortébert, went bankrupt during the quartz crisis and lost the rights to their names, which now are used to peddle cheap quartz styles. Others were acquired by Chinese companies (in Eterna’s case, by Citychamp Watch & Jewellery Group of Hong Kong, which, in 2013, also acquired Corum, another Swiss maker) and continue to make watches, but have failed to recapture their past glory. Some of the greatest American watchmakers of the past 150 years have had similar experiences. Companies such as Elgin, Gruen and Waltham have been acquired, restarted and traded, but now are not much more than brand names awaiting a savvy marketer or cash-rich opportunist to resuscitate them. Evidence Of all the great 20th century brands that lost their way, however, there is one (you may have a good guess by now) whose fate continues to torment vintage watch lovers. Claim “Universal Genève is the one that breaks my heart,” Ms. Wheldon wrote in an email following her phone interview. “Its historical ties to Hermès, Patek Philippe (through Henri Stern) and Gerald Genta are all reasons to love this brand.” Mr. Laidet said he tried last summer, and failed, to acquire the rights to Universal Genève, which was purchased in 1989 by Stelux, a Hong Kong-based investment group. It tried to revive the brand about two decades ago, and has done very little with it since. Evidence But Mr. Laidet still hopes that, one day, he might be able to introduce a modern version of the Genta-designed Polerouter featuring elements, such as the micro-rotor, that have made it a darling of collectors. Rebuttal “Universal Genève would be the dream,” he said. “The unicorn.” Claim

nytimes\what-to-cook-this-weekend.txt

Using custom data configuration default-48ddc962f16c1452

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-48ddc962f16c1452\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-48ddc962f16c1452\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Good morning. Weekends are for project cooking in my house — lasagna, birria tacos with chile broth, guanciale and the like. Three-day weekends, though? They’re for project baking. And with Presidents’ Day on Monday, I can’t wait to dig into the possibilities presented by my colleague Krysten Chambrot’s thrilling new article, “24 Brilliant Baking Recipes to Change Your Kitchen Game.” {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.5760892629623413}
It’s filled with sage advice and clever hacks, and two dozen of our best and most favorite recipes for baking joy. I want to dive right into the tray of butter mochi, to spread ganache and mascarpone on this amazing chocolate cake (above). I’d like to make tres leches bread pudding, mango pie, peanut butter-miso cookies, namoura — all my friends. Explore our collection of baking recipes, and cook what you like. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9561432600021362}
But that’s not all you should make, or eat, this weekend. I’d really like to lay into a tray of pastelón, for instance. I’d like to make gravlax, too, though even with Monday off work it won’t be ready until next weekend, a brunch to dream about all week long. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.7847127914428711}
Arctic char with spinach butter on Saturday night? A carrot tart with ricotta and feta on Sunday night? Seeded pecan granola for late breakfast on Monday? {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.5816576480865479}
And definitely I’d like to steer into lunches: a Reuben sandwich for sure (unless you don’t eat meat, in which case, hail the portobello patty melt); and either a mushroom tart or a crab-meat quiche (or both!). {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.959603488445282}
You can find more inspiration for what to cook this weekend on our social media channels — primarily on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. And there are thousands and thousands more recipes waiting for you on New York Times Cooking. It’s a fact that you need a subscription to access them, just as you need a subscription to learn how to cook intuitively in an online class taught by the Los Angeles chef Roy Choi. Subscriptions are the fuel in our stoves. They allow our work to continue. If you haven’t yet taken the plunge, I hope you will subscribe today. Thank you. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.7083384990692139}
And if something goes sideways along the way, either with your cooking or our technology? Please write us: cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you. Or you can write to me: foodeditor@nytimes.com. I’m not the guy to resolve issues. I pass those requests along to our team. But if you’ve got a complaint or a kind word to spare, I read every letter sent. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9312078356742859}
Now, it’s nothing to do with rice pudding or the excellence of preserved black fungus in chile oil, but I still think you ought to take some time this weekend to read Jessica Bennett’s spare and intriguing review of Imogen Crimp’s novel, “A Very Nice Girl,” in The Times. You may hit the bookstore or library after that. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7900925874710083}
Here’s a poem from Jen Calleja, “Dust Sucker,” in The White Review. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.6006887555122375}
There’s a fine exhibition of the work of Hans Holbein up at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, but don’t take my word for it. Jason Farago’s review of the show, also in The Times, will get you there or, at any rate, have you exploring the collection online. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8604370951652527}
Finally, Spoon’s back. Here’s “The Devil & Mister Jones,” from the band’s latest, “Lucifer on the Sofa.” Listen to that nice and loud. And as the saying goes, I’ll see you on Sunday. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.7447823882102966}

Good morning. Weekends are for project cooking in my house — lasagna, birria tacos with chile broth, guanciale and the like. Three-day weekends, though? They’re for project baking. And with Presidents’ Day on Monday, I can’t wait to dig into the possibilities presented by my colleague Krysten Chambrot’s thrilling new article, “24 Brilliant Baking Recipes to Change Your Kitchen Game.” Lead It’s filled with sage advice and clever hacks, and two dozen of our best and most favorite recipes for baking joy. I want to dive right into the tray of butter mochi, to spread ganache and mascarpone on this amazing chocolate cake (above). I’d like to make tres leches bread pudding, mango pie, peanut butter-miso cookies, namoura — all my friends. Explore our collection of baking recipes, and cook what you like. Evidence But that’s not all you should make, or eat, this weekend. I’d really like to lay into a tray of pastelón, for instance. I’d like to make gravlax, too, though even with Monday off work it won’t be ready until next weekend, a brunch to dream about all week long. Rebuttal Arctic char with spinach butter on Saturday night? A carrot tart with ricotta and feta on Sunday night? Seeded pecan granola for late breakfast on Monday? Lead And definitely I’d like to steer into lunches: a Reuben sandwich for sure (unless you don’t eat meat, in which case, hail the portobello patty melt); and either a mushroom tart or a crab-meat quiche (or both!). Evidence You can find more inspiration for what to cook this weekend on our social media channels — primarily on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. And there are thousands and thousands more recipes waiting for you on New York Times Cooking. It’s a fact that you need a subscription to access them, just as you need a subscription to learn how to cook intuitively in an online class taught by the Los Angeles chef Roy Choi. Subscriptions are the fuel in our stoves. They allow our work to continue. If you haven’t yet taken the plunge, I hope you will subscribe today. Thank you. Concluding Statement And if something goes sideways along the way, either with your cooking or our technology? Please write us: cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you. Or you can write to me: foodeditor@nytimes.com. I’m not the guy to resolve issues. I pass those requests along to our team. But if you’ve got a complaint or a kind word to spare, I read every letter sent. Now, it’s nothing to do with rice pudding or the excellence of preserved black fungus in chile oil, but I still think you ought to take some time this weekend to read Jessica Bennett’s spare and intriguing review of Imogen Crimp’s novel, “A Very Nice Girl,” in The Times. You may hit the bookstore or library after that. Evidence Here’s a poem from Jen Calleja, “Dust Sucker,” in The White Review. Lead There’s a fine exhibition of the work of Hans Holbein up at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, but don’t take my word for it. Jason Farago’s review of the show, also in The Times, will get you there or, at any rate, have you exploring the collection online. Evidence Finally, Spoon’s back. Here’s “The Devil & Mister Jones,” from the band’s latest, “Lucifer on the Sofa.” Listen to that nice and loud. And as the saying goes, I’ll see you on Sunday. Concluding Statement

nytimes\what-to-do-when-you-dont-want-to-run.txt

Using custom data configuration default-4566026c5d9136ca

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-4566026c5d9136ca\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-4566026c5d9136ca\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Welcome to the Running newsletter! Every Saturday morning, we email runners with news, advice and some motivation to help you get up and running. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.8587416410446167}
On Wednesday, I put on my running gear, went to the bathroom, tucked my phone into my pocket. I was dressed and ready to go. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5646201968193054}
And then, I sat on my bed, looked at my dog, and said “Annie, I would rather not.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7723787426948547}
I’m not feeling very motivated right now. My goal race is more than two months away, the weather where I live in New Jersey has been less than ideal, and all I see ahead are batches of miles to be run on the same roads I have been running on for most of my adult life. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.696940004825592}
These dips happen, and there are things you can do if you’re in a running rut, whether your goal is to bust right out of it, or just pass the miles until the weather improves or the big race gets close enough to feel in reach. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7694893479347229}
You may laugh, but I get a lot of emails and tweets from people who are struggling to run because of some stabbing pain, and want me to tell them what to do so running can be enjoyable again (go to a doctor GO TO A DOCTOR the answer is always go to a doctor). We’re used to this sport being mildly uncomfortable. If pain is stopping you from getting out the door, it’s the pain that’s the problem, not the running you’re not doing. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9544240832328796}
Because life can be a drag. Family stress, work stress, too much travel, not enough sleep — all of these things can suck the luster out of your running. After I bonked on a long run a few weeks ago, I did this kind of self-check. It didn’t seem to be any of those. But I realized that even though my weekly mileage had increased, I hadn’t increased how much I was eating. (For more on the relationship between exercise and metabolism, here’s a report from Gretchen Reynolds on new research and my guide, How to Feed a Runner.) {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9859872460365295}
If you run the same route over and over again, run a different route — or run that route in the opposite direction. Run in the morning? Try running at night (properly lit up, please). I give props to anyone able to run on a treadmill for more than 20 minutes because treadmills make me want to drill holes into my eyeballs. If you’re bored there, hit buttons: Increase the incline, or add in a few doses of running at higher speeds. Or watch something different. When I ran on a treadmill more often, I’d often park myself in front of whatever TV was showing the Phillies game, or “The Price is Right,” depending on what time of day I was there. It helped. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9830575585365295}
Having a destination in mind makes it not just about a run, but checking something off your to-do list. I’ve run to my P.O. box, dropped off/picked up books at a Little Free Library, left something for my mom on her porch. I even once picked up a piece of jewelry I’d had engraved. I think the woman in the full fur coat was surprised to see me in my running clothes next to her at the jewelry counter, but I got my miles in that day. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9887579679489136}
My friend Hollie Sick, who runs the site FueledbyLOLZ, said she had also been feeling unmotivated, so we decided to run together once a week. Even though she’s much (much) faster than me in races, our easy training pace is about the same. We talk about just about everything, and before we know it, our hour run is done. I even introduced her to the joy of running to a Little Free Library. Running with someone else can take your mind off a task that, right now for both of us, seems pretty blah. If you don’t have a running friend who has your pace and schedule, check out your local running store to see if they have a group run. I usually join group runs when I travel to a place I don’t know well. I did this at RunnersWorld Tulsa on a night when their group run was also a scavenger hunt. I had a blast and got a memorable tour of a great city. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9920594692230225}
I have said in this space many times before that you don’t need a ton of gear to run. However, I also realized last week that I had been switching between the same two pairs of running tights that, if you combined their ages, would be a high school sophomore. So I bought two new pairs. I’m not saying you can shop your way out of being unmotivated, but a new piece of gear falls under the same category as “do something different.” It doesn’t have to be something expensive either. It can be a new hat or headband, or nail polish that matches your running shoes. This is also a good time to look for deals as running stores start to clear out winter gear in anticipation of spring and summer running, or are pushing the last of last summer’s stock out the door. I bought two pairs of running shorts for $15 each this way. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9901331663131714}
I’ll be taking them to Florida a week from today, on what I hope will be a magical, sunshine-filled trip to Walt Disney World. I will of course be running while there. Planning these vacation runs has been an opportunity to revisit Disney World’s “jogging” page, which features a photo of runners that is so old that clothing like theirs is now sold as retro gear at Urban Outfitters. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8254809975624084}
What you do when you’re feeling unmotivated? Let me know — I’m on Twitter @byjenamiller. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.6691340804100037}
Run Well! {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6476081013679504}
— Jen {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.9708964824676514}

Welcome to the Running newsletter! Every Saturday morning, we email runners with news, advice and some motivation to help you get up and running. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. Lead On Wednesday, I put on my running gear, went to the bathroom, tucked my phone into my pocket. I was dressed and ready to go. And then, I sat on my bed, looked at my dog, and said “Annie, I would rather not.” I’m not feeling very motivated right now. My goal race is more than two months away, the weather where I live in New Jersey has been less than ideal, and all I see ahead are batches of miles to be run on the same roads I have been running on for most of my adult life. These dips happen, and there are things you can do if you’re in a running rut, whether your goal is to bust right out of it, or just pass the miles until the weather improves or the big race gets close enough to feel in reach. You may laugh, but I get a lot of emails and tweets from people who are struggling to run because of some stabbing pain, and want me to tell them what to do so running can be enjoyable again (go to a doctor GO TO A DOCTOR the answer is always go to a doctor). We’re used to this sport being mildly uncomfortable. If pain is stopping you from getting out the door, it’s the pain that’s the problem, not the running you’re not doing. Because life can be a drag. Family stress, work stress, too much travel, not enough sleep — all of these things can suck the luster out of your running. After I bonked on a long run a few weeks ago, I did this kind of self-check. It didn’t seem to be any of those. But I realized that even though my weekly mileage had increased, I hadn’t increased how much I was eating. (For more on the relationship between exercise and metabolism, here’s a report from Gretchen Reynolds on new research and my guide, How to Feed a Runner.) If you run the same route over and over again, run a different route — or run that route in the opposite direction. Run in the morning? Try running at night (properly lit up, please). I give props to anyone able to run on a treadmill for more than 20 minutes because treadmills make me want to drill holes into my eyeballs. If you’re bored there, hit buttons: Increase the incline, or add in a few doses of running at higher speeds. Or watch something different. When I ran on a treadmill more often, I’d often park myself in front of whatever TV was showing the Phillies game, or “The Price is Right,” depending on what time of day I was there. It helped. Having a destination in mind makes it not just about a run, but checking something off your to-do list. I’ve run to my P.O. box, dropped off/picked up books at a Little Free Library, left something for my mom on her porch. I even once picked up a piece of jewelry I’d had engraved. I think the woman in the full fur coat was surprised to see me in my running clothes next to her at the jewelry counter, but I got my miles in that day. My friend Hollie Sick, who runs the site FueledbyLOLZ, said she had also been feeling unmotivated, so we decided to run together once a week. Even though she’s much (much) faster than me in races, our easy training pace is about the same. We talk about just about everything, and before we know it, our hour run is done. I even introduced her to the joy of running to a Little Free Library. Running with someone else can take your mind off a task that, right now for both of us, seems pretty blah. If you don’t have a running friend who has your pace and schedule, check out your local running store to see if they have a group run. I usually join group runs when I travel to a place I don’t know well. I did this at RunnersWorld Tulsa on a night when their group run was also a scavenger hunt. I had a blast and got a memorable tour of a great city. I have said in this space many times before that you don’t need a ton of gear to run. However, I also realized last week that I had been switching between the same two pairs of running tights that, if you combined their ages, would be a high school sophomore. So I bought two new pairs. I’m not saying you can shop your way out of being unmotivated, but a new piece of gear falls under the same category as “do something different.” It doesn’t have to be something expensive either. It can be a new hat or headband, or nail polish that matches your running shoes. This is also a good time to look for deals as running stores start to clear out winter gear in anticipation of spring and summer running, or are pushing the last of last summer’s stock out the door. I bought two pairs of running shorts for $15 each this way. I’ll be taking them to Florida a week from today, on what I hope will be a magical, sunshine-filled trip to Walt Disney World. I will of course be running while there. Planning these vacation runs has been an opportunity to revisit Disney World’s “jogging” page, which features a photo of runners that is so old that clothing like theirs is now sold as retro gear at Urban Outfitters. Evidence What you do when you’re feeling unmotivated? Let me know — I’m on Twitter @byjenamiller. Lead Run Well! — Jen Claim

nytimes\what-would-it-mean-to-end-the-covid-state-of-emergency.txt

Using custom data configuration default-2fc4432e39b40ce1

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-2fc4432e39b40ce1\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-2fc4432e39b40ce1\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

This article is part of the Debatable newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it on Tuesdays and Thursdays. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4031984806060791}
As the Omicron wave recedes from the United States, a new politics of pandemic resignation is setting in. Pundits on late-night television talk of being “done with Covid.” High-profile governors in big blue states — California, New York and New Jersey among them — are lifting indoor mask mandates. And according to a recent poll, 70 percent of Americans agree that “it’s time we accept that Covid is here to stay and we just need to get on with our lives.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5165165662765503}
And yet what exactly it would mean to “get on with our lives,” and how to do so, remains unclear. Covid case and hospitalization rates are declining almost everywhere in the country, but over 2,300 Americans are still dying every day, more than at any point of the pandemic except last winter. And while the public may want a return to normal, it also does not necessarily want an immediate end to coronavirus restrictions. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5179187059402466}
At this once again uncertain stage of the pandemic, how should we be thinking about Covid prevention measures? Is it time to consider shifting the domain of Covid mitigation from government mandates to personal risk assessments and behavior? Here’s what people are saying. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.2979241609573364}
As The Times’s David Leonhardt has written, some Americans, particularly on the liberal side of the spectrum, have come to speak of expert opinion and science almost as an ultimate authority on Covid precautions, one that “could solve our dilemmas if we only listened.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.38080525398254395}
But every Covid restriction has public-health benefits as well as potential social and economic downsides. Science, at its best, can give us an accurate picture of what those trade-offs are. But it cannot resolve the question — which is a fundamentally political one — of which trade-offs are worth making. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8884490728378296}
“The truth is that science doesn’t have an answer for what level of Covid-19 transmission is acceptable in schools before and after masks are removed or what level is acceptable in communities before and after vaccine verification,” Jay K. Varma writes for The Times. “Someone has to decide, and that decision will involve subjective assessments of the risks people will tolerate.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4758839011192322}
Compliance adds another complicating factor. As Michael Bang Petersen, a professor of political science who advises the Danish government on Covid policy, writes in The Times, “Within the set of legitimate strategies, the choice of strategy is often less important than whether or not people follow and support it.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.655072808265686}
With vaccines and high-quality masks now widely available, expert opinion about the wisdom of mask mandates is no longer as homogeneous as it once was. Leana Wen, for example, a professor at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health, has argued that masks should be optional, not required, even at high rates of community transmission. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8833707571029663}
Those concerned about contracting the virus or transmitting it to others would retain the option of one-way masking, which experts say can still confer good protection. If you are vaccinated, boosted, and wearing a well-fitted N95 or similar mask indoors, “your risk is extremely low,” Joseph Allen, a Covid and ventilation expert at Harvard, told The Atlantic. “I mean, there’s not much else in life that would have as low a risk as that.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9324812889099121}
But others argue that one-way masking is a mistaken public health strategy. Research has shown that while one-way masking, particularly with an N95 or similar, does substantially reduce the risk of infection, it is not a perfect substitute for universal masking. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.6764973998069763}
At this stage, then, the benefits of convenience from doing away with mask mandates will come at the expense of the most vulnerable, Abdullah Shihipar, a public-health researcher based at Brown University, argues in Slate. “If we share the burden of masking in public spaces, not only will vulnerable people be better protected, but cases will go down faster,” he writes. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8259523510932922}
Still others believe that mask mandate changes won’t significantly affect people’s behavior. “Even with mandates,” says Tara Parker Pope of The Times, “the reality has been that people who hate masks are lax and wear flimsy masks below those noses and people who don’t mind masks are wearing them correctly.” {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.8960970044136047}
Schools occupy a uniquely contentious corner of the national mask debate, for a couple of reasons: {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7827104330062866}
Some experts believe that school masking isn’t very beneficial in a post-Omicron world, since cloth masks are insufficiently protective, surgical masks are poorly fitted for young children and pediatric N95s don’t exist. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.9028172492980957}
In recent months, more concerns have also been raised about the potential harms masking might inflict on childhood development. A new study out of Canada, for example, found that the deficit in face perception abilities with masks was more pronounced in children than in adults. “There is a possibility it could impair children’s ability to navigate through social interactions with their peers and teachers, and this could lead to issues forming important relationships,” Erez Freud, the study’s lead author, told The New York Post. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9766945838928223}
In part for these reasons, the United States remains an outlier in recommending masks from the age of 2. The World Health Organization does not recommend masks for children under 5, while the European equivalent of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t recommend them for those under 12. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8156499266624451}
Still, some parents find the idea of ending school mask mandates unfathomable in places where Covid continues to disrupt in-person schooling. “The substitute shortage is so bad that parents — and, in New Mexico, members of the National Guard — are being asked to fill in,” The Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote at the end of January. “This isn’t a problem that can be fixed with an attitude adjustment.” {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.7795534729957581}
Some commentators have also pointed out that the evidence that masking harms children is at best inconclusive. “There are few long-term studies on masks and development because we’ve only been wearing them widely in the United States for two years or so (and some places never fully adopted them),” Melody Schreiber writes for The New Republic. “But it’s striking that, two years in, early fears about developmental issues from masks have still not materialized into delays.” {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.6000400185585022}
Some public health experts hope that the rollback of mask mandates may create an opening to draw the public’s attention to a long-overlooked Covid prevention measure: ventilation and filtration. Ventilation and filtration can significantly reduce the number of infectious particles in the air, and unlike masks don’t rely on personal choice. “They can run in the background without getting too mired in political decision making, so it’s important to lean on them,” Anisa Heming, director of the Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council, said recently. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.48897337913513184}
But upgrading ventilation systems in public spaces is a costly and involved proposition. While The American Rescue Plan provided billions of dollars to schools to adapt to Covid, it’s not clear whether those funds are being spent wisely. “I have so many examples, I’m collecting them now, with schools being sold, essentially, snake oil, when all they need to do is try to figure out the ventilation and the HEPA filter,” Zeynep Tufekci of The Times said last month. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.7084276676177979}
Of all the Covid prevention measures we have at our disposal, vaccines are far and away the most effective at reducing the risk of hospitalization and death. But the U.S. vaccination rate continues to trail that of dozens of other countries, with only 64 percent of the population having received two doses. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7430015802383423}
The politics of changing that statistic have proved prohibitive. The Supreme Court has bound the Biden administration’s hands when it comes to federal vaccine mandates, and a sizable minority of Americans remain so opposed to a Covid vaccination that there is little chance of persuading them. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6563692092895508}
Still, many believe there is more the government can do to increase the vaccination rate: {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.94040846824646}
As Sarah Zhang notes in The Atlantic, Covid hospitalizations and deaths are disproportionately concentrated in older populations, and 11 percent of Americans 65 and older still haven’t received a shot — a significantly larger share than in other countries. To change that, experts whom Zhang spoke to recommended that the agency that oversees Medicare provide more direct incentives for vaccination, like making vaccination and booster rates among patients a criterion for determining how much providers are reimbursed and how highly the quality of nursing homes are rated. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9884539246559143}
As Elisabeth Rosenthal points out in The Times, the vaccination rates among children ages 5 to 11 are still alarmingly low. But there is a simple, time-tested way to rectify that: States could mandate vaccination against the coronavirus in schools, just as they already do for measles and chickenpox.  {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7282728552818298}
And vaccinating the rest of the world is still a vital prevention measure against future waves, Gregg Gonsalves, a Yale epidemiologist and AIDS activist, argues in The Times. “Think of the home we’ve then made for viruses like SARS-CoV-2 by impeding access to vaccines and allowing millions to go without AIDS treatment even now,” he writes. “Variants can emerge from our desire to put it all behind us. No one is truly safe until we all are.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9125950932502747}
In the United States, about 7 million people — more than the populations of 36 states — have compromised immune systems that are partly or completely incapable of generating immunity against the coronavirus. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6557157635688782}
For the state of emergency to end for this vulnerable group, Dorry Segev and William Werbel argue in The Times that blanket restrictions on additional vaccine doses have to be lifted; production of pre-exposure monoclonal antibody treatments has to be scaled up; and, most important, pharmaceutical companies conducting clinical trials for Covid drugs need to include people with weakened immune systems. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9241852760314941}
Immunocompromised people also deserve accommodations that make their lives easier, Ed Yong argues in The Atlantic, much as ramps, accessibility buttons and screen readers have made life easier for disabled people. No immunocompromised person he spoke to wanted a lockdown. What they did want, in addition to better medical treatments, was more work flexibility and better ways of controlling infectious diseases through ventilation standards, mask mandates for essential spaces such as grocery stores and pharmacies that can be tied to case rates, widespread availability of tests, paid sick leave and improved vaccination rates. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8440365791320801}
Yong argues that these changes would benefit everyone in the long run, not just the immunocompromised. But there are selfish reasons for healthy people to support them too. For one thing, the coronavirus evolves rapidly in people with weakened immune systems, so protecting immunocompromised people could guard against future variants. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6399056315422058}
And for another, even healthy people’s immune systems tend to weaken with age. “Everyone’s going to deal with illness at some point in their life,” Maggie Levantovskaya, a writer and literature professor who has lupus, told him. “Don’t you want a better world for yourself when that time comes?” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9549292922019958}
Do you have a point of view we missed? Email us at debatable@nytimes.com. Please note your name, age and location in your response, which may be included in the next newsletter.  {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.5824450850486755}
“Vulnerable to the Virus, High-Risk Americans Feel Pain as the U.S. Moves On” [The New York Times] {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.703158974647522}
“Post-Omicron Life Can Be Downright Maddening” [The Atlantic] {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6441587209701538}
“How to Reclaim Normal Life Without Being ‘Done’” [The Atlantic] {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6827024817466736}
“There Will Be No Post-Covid” [The New York Times] {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6548691987991333}
“The Covid Emergency Is Ending. Here’s What We Should Do Next.” [Politico] {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.48527756333351135}

This article is part of the Debatable newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it on Tuesdays and Thursdays. As the Omicron wave recedes from the United States, a new politics of pandemic resignation is setting in. Pundits on late-night television talk of being “done with Covid.” High-profile governors in big blue states — California, New York and New Jersey among them — are lifting indoor mask mandates. And according to a recent poll, 70 percent of Americans agree that “it’s time we accept that Covid is here to stay and we just need to get on with our lives.” And yet what exactly it would mean to “get on with our lives,” and how to do so, remains unclear. Covid case and hospitalization rates are declining almost everywhere in the country, but over 2,300 Americans are still dying every day, more than at any point of the pandemic except last winter. And while the public may want a return to normal, it also does not necessarily want an immediate end to coronavirus restrictions. Evidence At this once again uncertain stage of the pandemic, how should we be thinking about Covid prevention measures? Is it time to consider shifting the domain of Covid mitigation from government mandates to personal risk assessments and behavior? Here’s what people are saying. Concluding Statement As The Times’s David Leonhardt has written, some Americans, particularly on the liberal side of the spectrum, have come to speak of expert opinion and science almost as an ultimate authority on Covid precautions, one that “could solve our dilemmas if we only listened.” Evidence But every Covid restriction has public-health benefits as well as potential social and economic downsides. Science, at its best, can give us an accurate picture of what those trade-offs are. But it cannot resolve the question — which is a fundamentally political one — of which trade-offs are worth making. Rebuttal “The truth is that science doesn’t have an answer for what level of Covid-19 transmission is acceptable in schools before and after masks are removed or what level is acceptable in communities before and after vaccine verification,” Jay K. Varma writes for The Times. “Someone has to decide, and that decision will involve subjective assessments of the risks people will tolerate.” Compliance adds another complicating factor. As Michael Bang Petersen, a professor of political science who advises the Danish government on Covid policy, writes in The Times, “Within the set of legitimate strategies, the choice of strategy is often less important than whether or not people follow and support it.” With vaccines and high-quality masks now widely available, expert opinion about the wisdom of mask mandates is no longer as homogeneous as it once was. Leana Wen, for example, a professor at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health, has argued that masks should be optional, not required, even at high rates of community transmission. Those concerned about contracting the virus or transmitting it to others would retain the option of one-way masking, which experts say can still confer good protection. If you are vaccinated, boosted, and wearing a well-fitted N95 or similar mask indoors, “your risk is extremely low,” Joseph Allen, a Covid and ventilation expert at Harvard, told The Atlantic. “I mean, there’s not much else in life that would have as low a risk as that.” Evidence But others argue that one-way masking is a mistaken public health strategy. Research has shown that while one-way masking, particularly with an N95 or similar, does substantially reduce the risk of infection, it is not a perfect substitute for universal masking. Counterclaim At this stage, then, the benefits of convenience from doing away with mask mandates will come at the expense of the most vulnerable, Abdullah Shihipar, a public-health researcher based at Brown University, argues in Slate. “If we share the burden of masking in public spaces, not only will vulnerable people be better protected, but cases will go down faster,” he writes. Evidence Still others believe that mask mandate changes won’t significantly affect people’s behavior. “Even with mandates,” says Tara Parker Pope of The Times, “the reality has been that people who hate masks are lax and wear flimsy masks below those noses and people who don’t mind masks are wearing them correctly.” Counterclaim Schools occupy a uniquely contentious corner of the national mask debate, for a couple of reasons: Claim Some experts believe that school masking isn’t very beneficial in a post-Omicron world, since cloth masks are insufficiently protective, surgical masks are poorly fitted for young children and pediatric N95s don’t exist. Counterclaim In recent months, more concerns have also been raised about the potential harms masking might inflict on childhood development. A new study out of Canada, for example, found that the deficit in face perception abilities with masks was more pronounced in children than in adults. “There is a possibility it could impair children’s ability to navigate through social interactions with their peers and teachers, and this could lead to issues forming important relationships,” Erez Freud, the study’s lead author, told The New York Post. In part for these reasons, the United States remains an outlier in recommending masks from the age of 2. The World Health Organization does not recommend masks for children under 5, while the European equivalent of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t recommend them for those under 12. Evidence Still, some parents find the idea of ending school mask mandates unfathomable in places where Covid continues to disrupt in-person schooling. “The substitute shortage is so bad that parents — and, in New Mexico, members of the National Guard — are being asked to fill in,” The Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote at the end of January. “This isn’t a problem that can be fixed with an attitude adjustment.” Some commentators have also pointed out that the evidence that masking harms children is at best inconclusive. “There are few long-term studies on masks and development because we’ve only been wearing them widely in the United States for two years or so (and some places never fully adopted them),” Melody Schreiber writes for The New Republic. “But it’s striking that, two years in, early fears about developmental issues from masks have still not materialized into delays.” Counterclaim Some public health experts hope that the rollback of mask mandates may create an opening to draw the public’s attention to a long-overlooked Covid prevention measure: ventilation and filtration. Ventilation and filtration can significantly reduce the number of infectious particles in the air, and unlike masks don’t rely on personal choice. “They can run in the background without getting too mired in political decision making, so it’s important to lean on them,” Anisa Heming, director of the Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council, said recently. Evidence But upgrading ventilation systems in public spaces is a costly and involved proposition. While The American Rescue Plan provided billions of dollars to schools to adapt to Covid, it’s not clear whether those funds are being spent wisely. “I have so many examples, I’m collecting them now, with schools being sold, essentially, snake oil, when all they need to do is try to figure out the ventilation and the HEPA filter,” Zeynep Tufekci of The Times said last month. Rebuttal Of all the Covid prevention measures we have at our disposal, vaccines are far and away the most effective at reducing the risk of hospitalization and death. But the U.S. vaccination rate continues to trail that of dozens of other countries, with only 64 percent of the population having received two doses. The politics of changing that statistic have proved prohibitive. The Supreme Court has bound the Biden administration’s hands when it comes to federal vaccine mandates, and a sizable minority of Americans remain so opposed to a Covid vaccination that there is little chance of persuading them. Evidence Still, many believe there is more the government can do to increase the vaccination rate: Counterclaim As Sarah Zhang notes in The Atlantic, Covid hospitalizations and deaths are disproportionately concentrated in older populations, and 11 percent of Americans 65 and older still haven’t received a shot — a significantly larger share than in other countries. To change that, experts whom Zhang spoke to recommended that the agency that oversees Medicare provide more direct incentives for vaccination, like making vaccination and booster rates among patients a criterion for determining how much providers are reimbursed and how highly the quality of nursing homes are rated. As Elisabeth Rosenthal points out in The Times, the vaccination rates among children ages 5 to 11 are still alarmingly low. But there is a simple, time-tested way to rectify that: States could mandate vaccination against the coronavirus in schools, just as they already do for measles and chickenpox. And vaccinating the rest of the world is still a vital prevention measure against future waves, Gregg Gonsalves, a Yale epidemiologist and AIDS activist, argues in The Times. “Think of the home we’ve then made for viruses like SARS-CoV-2 by impeding access to vaccines and allowing millions to go without AIDS treatment even now,” he writes. “Variants can emerge from our desire to put it all behind us. No one is truly safe until we all are.” Evidence In the United States, about 7 million people — more than the populations of 36 states — have compromised immune systems that are partly or completely incapable of generating immunity against the coronavirus. Claim For the state of emergency to end for this vulnerable group, Dorry Segev and William Werbel argue in The Times that blanket restrictions on additional vaccine doses have to be lifted; production of pre-exposure monoclonal antibody treatments has to be scaled up; and, most important, pharmaceutical companies conducting clinical trials for Covid drugs need to include people with weakened immune systems. Immunocompromised people also deserve accommodations that make their lives easier, Ed Yong argues in The Atlantic, much as ramps, accessibility buttons and screen readers have made life easier for disabled people. No immunocompromised person he spoke to wanted a lockdown. What they did want, in addition to better medical treatments, was more work flexibility and better ways of controlling infectious diseases through ventilation standards, mask mandates for essential spaces such as grocery stores and pharmacies that can be tied to case rates, widespread availability of tests, paid sick leave and improved vaccination rates. Yong argues that these changes would benefit everyone in the long run, not just the immunocompromised. But there are selfish reasons for healthy people to support them too. For one thing, the coronavirus evolves rapidly in people with weakened immune systems, so protecting immunocompromised people could guard against future variants. And for another, even healthy people’s immune systems tend to weaken with age. “Everyone’s going to deal with illness at some point in their life,” Maggie Levantovskaya, a writer and literature professor who has lupus, told him. “Don’t you want a better world for yourself when that time comes?” Evidence Do you have a point of view we missed? Email us at debatable@nytimes.com. Please note your name, age and location in your response, which may be included in the next newsletter. Concluding Statement “Vulnerable to the Virus, High-Risk Americans Feel Pain as the U.S. Moves On” [The New York Times] “Post-Omicron Life Can Be Downright Maddening” [The Atlantic] “How to Reclaim Normal Life Without Being ‘Done’” [The Atlantic] “There Will Be No Post-Covid” [The New York Times] “The Covid Emergency Is Ending. Here’s What We Should Do Next.” [Politico] Claim

nytimes\women-stem-pandemic.txt

Using custom data configuration default-53a513dbd618a502

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-53a513dbd618a502\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-53a513dbd618a502\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

Like many women during the pandemic, Alisa Stephens found working from home to be a series of wearying challenges. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7086262106895447}
Dr. Stephens is a biostatistician at the University of Pennsylvania, and the technical and detail-oriented nature of her work requires long uninterrupted stretches of thought. Finding the time and mental space for that work with two young children at home proved to be an impossibility. {'label': 'Lead', 'score': 0.3205578923225403}
“That first month was really hard,” she recalled of the lockdown. Her infant daughter’s day care was closed, and her 5-year-old was at home instead of at school. With their nanny unable to come to the house, Dr. Stephens tended to her children all day and worked late into the evening. In the fall, when her daughter was set to begin kindergarten, the schools did not reopen. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9706765413284302}
Things eased once the family could safely bring in a nanny, but there was still little time for the deep thought Dr. Stephens had relied on each morning for her work. Over time, she has adjusted her expectations of herself. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8456321954727173}
“Maybe I’m at 80 percent as opposed to 100 percent, but I can get things done at 80 percent to some extent,” she said. “It’s not great, it’s not my best, but it’s enough for now.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7677422165870667}
Dr. Stephens is in good company. Several studies have found that women have published fewer papers, led fewer clinical trials and received less recognition for their expertise during the pandemic. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.3569394648075104}
Add to that the emotional upheaval and stress of the pandemic, the protests over structural racism, worry about children’s mental health and education, and the lack of time to think or work, and an already unsustainable situation becomes unbearable. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5404871702194214}
“The confluence of all of these factors creates this perfect storm. People are at their breaking point,” said Michelle Cardel, an obesity researcher at the University of Florida. “My big fear is that we are going to have a secondary epidemic of loss, particularly of early career women in STEM.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8998158574104309}
Female scientists were struggling even before the pandemic. It was not unusual for them to hear that women were not as smart as men, or that a woman who was successful must have received a handout along the way, said Daniela Witten, a biostatistician at the University of Washington in Seattle. Some things are changing, she said, but only with great effort, and at a glacial pace. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8968607187271118}
The career ladder is particularly steep for mothers. Even during maternity leave, they are expected to keep up with lab work, teaching requirements, publications and mentoring of graduate students. When they return to work, most do not have affordable child care. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8742601871490479}
Women in academia often have little recourse when confronted with discrimination. Their institutions sometimes lack the human resources structures common in the business world. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6321790218353271}
The path is even rockier for scientists of color, like Dr. Stephens, who encounter other biases in the workplace — in everyday reactions, professional reviews or promotions — and now have to cope with the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on Black and Latino communities. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.5377875566482544}
Dr. Stephens said a close friend, also a Black scientist, had five family members who contracted Covid-19. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6248544454574585}
The year has been a “pause” for everyone, Dr. Stephens added, and universities should find a way to help scientists when the pandemic ends — perhaps by adding an extra year to the time allotted to them to earn tenure. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4474700689315796}
Others said while extra time for tenure may help, it will be far from enough. {'label': 'Counterclaim', 'score': 0.8709744215011597}
“It’s sort of like if you’re drowning, and the university tells you, ‘Don’t worry if it takes you an extra year to get back to shore,’” Dr. Witten said. “It’s like, ‘Hey, that’s not helpful. I need a flotation device.’” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8415361046791077}
Compounding the frustration are the outdated notions about how to help women in science. But social media has allowed women to share some of those concerns and find allies to organize and call out injustice when they see it, said Jessica Hamerman, an immunologist at the Benaroya Research Institute in Seattle. “People are just much less likely to sit quietly, and listen to biased statements that affect them.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6809058785438538}
In November, for example, a controversial study on female scientists was published in the influential journal Nature Communications, suggesting that having female mentors would hinder the career of young scientists and recommending that the young women instead seek out men to help them. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9721740484237671}
The response was intense and unforgiving. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7841407060623169}
Hundreds of scientists, male and female, renounced the paper’s flawed methods and conclusions, saying it reinforced outdated stereotypes and neglected to take structural biases in academia into account. {'label': 'Concluding Statement', 'score': 0.21784380078315735}
“The advice from the paper was basically similar to advice your grandmother may have given you 50 years ago: Get yourself a man who will take care of you, and all will be fine,” Dr. Cardel said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7518447637557983}
Nearly 7,600 scientists signed a petition calling on the journal to retract the paper — which it did on Dec. 21. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.45241257548332214}
The study arrived at a time when many female scientists were already worried about the pandemic’s effect on their careers, and already on edge and angry with a system that offered them little support. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.694966197013855}
“It’s been an incredibly difficult time to be a woman in science,” said Leslie Vosshall, a neuroscientist at Rockefeller University in New York. “We’re already on the ground, we’re already on our knees — and then the paper just comes and kicks us to say: ‘We have the solution, let’s move the graduate students to a senior man.’” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6752269864082336}
Some people on Twitter suggested that the Nature Communications paper had been retracted because a “feminist mob” had demanded it, but in fact the paper was “a dumpster fire of data,” Dr. Vosshall said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.4965473413467407}
The study was based on flawed assumptions and statistical analysis, according to several statisticians. (The authors of the paper declined to comment.) {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.397562712430954}
Dr. Vosshall said she felt compelled to push back because the paper was “dangerous.” Department chairs and deans of medical schools would have used the research to steer graduate students toward male mentors and roll back any progress toward making science more equitable, she said: “The older I get, the more of a window I have onto how this profession really works.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9391818642616272}
She has applied some of her wisdom to invoke change at Rockefeller University, one of the oldest research institutions in the country. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5567817687988281}
A couple of years ago, Rockefeller University invited the news anchor Rachel Maddow to present a prestigious prize. On her way into the auditorium, Ms. Maddow pointed to a wall adorned with pictures of Lasker Award and Nobel Prize winners — all male — affiliated with the university. At least four women at the university had also won prestigious prizes, but their photographs were not on display. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6166684627532959}
“What’s up with the dude wall?” Ms. Maddow asked. And Dr. Vosshall, who had walked past the wall a thousand times, suddenly saw it differently. She realized it sent the wrong message, overtly or not, to all the high school, undergraduate and graduate students who routinely walked past it. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.529001772403717}
“Once you notice a dude wall, you see them everywhere,” she said. “They’re in every auditorium, every hallway, every departmental office, every conference room.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.8215707540512085}
Rockefeller University eventually agreed to replace the display with one that is more representative of the institution’s history. The pictures were taken down on Nov. 11, Dr. Vosshall announced on Twitter, and will be replaced by a more inclusive set. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7063097953796387}
Departments at Yale University and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston have also reconsidered their dude walls, Dr. Vosshall said. “There are some traditions that should not be perpetuated.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7025675177574158}

Like many women during the pandemic, Alisa Stephens found working from home to be a series of wearying challenges. Claim Dr. Stephens is a biostatistician at the University of Pennsylvania, and the technical and detail-oriented nature of her work requires long uninterrupted stretches of thought. Finding the time and mental space for that work with two young children at home proved to be an impossibility. Lead “That first month was really hard,” she recalled of the lockdown. Her infant daughter’s day care was closed, and her 5-year-old was at home instead of at school. With their nanny unable to come to the house, Dr. Stephens tended to her children all day and worked late into the evening. In the fall, when her daughter was set to begin kindergarten, the schools did not reopen. Things eased once the family could safely bring in a nanny, but there was still little time for the deep thought Dr. Stephens had relied on each morning for her work. Over time, she has adjusted her expectations of herself. “Maybe I’m at 80 percent as opposed to 100 percent, but I can get things done at 80 percent to some extent,” she said. “It’s not great, it’s not my best, but it’s enough for now.” Evidence Dr. Stephens is in good company. Several studies have found that women have published fewer papers, led fewer clinical trials and received less recognition for their expertise during the pandemic. Concluding Statement Add to that the emotional upheaval and stress of the pandemic, the protests over structural racism, worry about children’s mental health and education, and the lack of time to think or work, and an already unsustainable situation becomes unbearable. “The confluence of all of these factors creates this perfect storm. People are at their breaking point,” said Michelle Cardel, an obesity researcher at the University of Florida. “My big fear is that we are going to have a secondary epidemic of loss, particularly of early career women in STEM.” Female scientists were struggling even before the pandemic. It was not unusual for them to hear that women were not as smart as men, or that a woman who was successful must have received a handout along the way, said Daniela Witten, a biostatistician at the University of Washington in Seattle. Some things are changing, she said, but only with great effort, and at a glacial pace. The career ladder is particularly steep for mothers. Even during maternity leave, they are expected to keep up with lab work, teaching requirements, publications and mentoring of graduate students. When they return to work, most do not have affordable child care. Evidence Women in academia often have little recourse when confronted with discrimination. Their institutions sometimes lack the human resources structures common in the business world. Claim The path is even rockier for scientists of color, like Dr. Stephens, who encounter other biases in the workplace — in everyday reactions, professional reviews or promotions — and now have to cope with the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on Black and Latino communities. Dr. Stephens said a close friend, also a Black scientist, had five family members who contracted Covid-19. The year has been a “pause” for everyone, Dr. Stephens added, and universities should find a way to help scientists when the pandemic ends — perhaps by adding an extra year to the time allotted to them to earn tenure. Evidence Others said while extra time for tenure may help, it will be far from enough. Counterclaim “It’s sort of like if you’re drowning, and the university tells you, ‘Don’t worry if it takes you an extra year to get back to shore,’” Dr. Witten said. “It’s like, ‘Hey, that’s not helpful. I need a flotation device.’” Compounding the frustration are the outdated notions about how to help women in science. But social media has allowed women to share some of those concerns and find allies to organize and call out injustice when they see it, said Jessica Hamerman, an immunologist at the Benaroya Research Institute in Seattle. “People are just much less likely to sit quietly, and listen to biased statements that affect them.” In November, for example, a controversial study on female scientists was published in the influential journal Nature Communications, suggesting that having female mentors would hinder the career of young scientists and recommending that the young women instead seek out men to help them. Evidence The response was intense and unforgiving. Claim Hundreds of scientists, male and female, renounced the paper’s flawed methods and conclusions, saying it reinforced outdated stereotypes and neglected to take structural biases in academia into account. Concluding Statement “The advice from the paper was basically similar to advice your grandmother may have given you 50 years ago: Get yourself a man who will take care of you, and all will be fine,” Dr. Cardel said. Evidence Nearly 7,600 scientists signed a petition calling on the journal to retract the paper — which it did on Dec. 21. The study arrived at a time when many female scientists were already worried about the pandemic’s effect on their careers, and already on edge and angry with a system that offered them little support. Claim “It’s been an incredibly difficult time to be a woman in science,” said Leslie Vosshall, a neuroscientist at Rockefeller University in New York. “We’re already on the ground, we’re already on our knees — and then the paper just comes and kicks us to say: ‘We have the solution, let’s move the graduate students to a senior man.’” Some people on Twitter suggested that the Nature Communications paper had been retracted because a “feminist mob” had demanded it, but in fact the paper was “a dumpster fire of data,” Dr. Vosshall said. Evidence The study was based on flawed assumptions and statistical analysis, according to several statisticians. (The authors of the paper declined to comment.) Claim Dr. Vosshall said she felt compelled to push back because the paper was “dangerous.” Department chairs and deans of medical schools would have used the research to steer graduate students toward male mentors and roll back any progress toward making science more equitable, she said: “The older I get, the more of a window I have onto how this profession really works.” Evidence She has applied some of her wisdom to invoke change at Rockefeller University, one of the oldest research institutions in the country. Claim A couple of years ago, Rockefeller University invited the news anchor Rachel Maddow to present a prestigious prize. On her way into the auditorium, Ms. Maddow pointed to a wall adorned with pictures of Lasker Award and Nobel Prize winners — all male — affiliated with the university. At least four women at the university had also won prestigious prizes, but their photographs were not on display. “What’s up with the dude wall?” Ms. Maddow asked. And Dr. Vosshall, who had walked past the wall a thousand times, suddenly saw it differently. She realized it sent the wrong message, overtly or not, to all the high school, undergraduate and graduate students who routinely walked past it. “Once you notice a dude wall, you see them everywhere,” she said. “They’re in every auditorium, every hallway, every departmental office, every conference room.” Rockefeller University eventually agreed to replace the display with one that is more representative of the institution’s history. The pictures were taken down on Nov. 11, Dr. Vosshall announced on Twitter, and will be replaced by a more inclusive set. Departments at Yale University and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston have also reconsidered their dude walls, Dr. Vosshall said. “There are some traditions that should not be perpetuated.” Evidence

nytimes\yosemite-falls.txt

Using custom data configuration default-8f4806c7926efb6b

Downloading and preparing dataset text/default to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-8f4806c7926efb6b\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4...

Dataset text downloaded and prepared to C:\Users\Prannaya\.cache\huggingface\datasets\text\default-8f4806c7926efb6b\0.0.0\08f6fb1dd2dab0a18ea441c359e1d63794ea8cb53e7863e6edf8fc5655e47ec4. Subsequent calls will reuse this data.

The remnants of two storm systems that converged in drought-stricken California this week helped pump new life into one of Yosemite National Park’s most popular attractions: Yosemite Falls. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.6039536595344543}
“We had quite a storm,” the park said in an Instagram post on Tuesday, after more than six inches of rain fell over a 36-hour period. The park encompasses more than 747,000 acres along the central western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in east-central California. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9756234884262085}
Although the park said it did not have direct measurements, it said that “sensors suggest a few feet of snow fell at the higher elevations,” and that the snow level for much of the storm “was high,” which caused rivers and creeks “to rise substantially.” The Merced River at the Pohono Bridge rose 8.5 feet, the park said, noting it was 1.5 feet below flood stage. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9526221752166748}
At 2,425 feet high, Yosemite Falls is the tallest waterfall in North America. Its peak flow usually occurs in May, after most of the park’s snow melts, but by August it often slows to a trickle or is completely dry. Storms in the late fall can help restore the falls. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9748303294181824}
Video showed the nearly dry falls on Saturday, followed by a gushing flow of water by Tuesday. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.7757378220558167}
“It was great to see so much water back in the not only Yosemite Falls, but our region’s rivers and streams too,” said Tony McDaniel, a spokesman for the Yosemite Mariposa County Tourism Bureau. He said the falls look like how they would in the spring. “The rain was very welcomed, and to see Yosemite not only bursting with fall colors, but also rushing water again, is a beautiful sight to see, and I think everyone in the region is happy for it,” he said. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9578177332878113}
The rainfall was the result of two storms that converged in the Bay Area, bringing floods, high winds and some much-needed rain to California, which has wrestled with large wildfires and severe drought conditions that have been brought on by climate change. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9677926301956177}
“It’s a rare event,” Brian Ochs, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Hanford, Calif., said of the heavy rainfall. “It’s not just in October or anytime during the year.” {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.9159963726997375}
He said part of the reason for the replenished flow was the parched soil from the past few months. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.6659184694290161}
“The dry soil may have been less likely to absorb the water,” he said. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5289918184280396}
San Francisco saw at least four inches of rain in a 24-hour period, the city’s fourth wettest day ever, the Weather Service said on Monday. Sacramento also set a daily record, with more than five inches of rain. Forecasters paid tribute with a haiku: {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.986979603767395}
We did ask for rain {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.7892700433731079}
We begged and pleaded for it {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.9026222229003906}
And boy did it come {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.9829276204109192}
But the record rains will not end California’s ongoing drought. {'label': 'Rebuttal', 'score': 0.8803766965866089}
Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom extended the state’s drought emergency and asked residents to redouble their water conservation efforts. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.5414811968803406}
This has been California’s second driest year on record, with near-record low storage in the state’s largest reservoirs, according to the governor’s office. {'label': 'Evidence', 'score': 0.47904932498931885}
Severe drought conditions, worsened by climate change, continue to affect much of the Western United States and even the northern part of the Great Plains. {'label': 'Claim', 'score': 0.4784237742424011}

The remnants of two storm systems that converged in drought-stricken California this week helped pump new life into one of Yosemite National Park’s most popular attractions: Yosemite Falls. “We had quite a storm,” the park said in an Instagram post on Tuesday, after more than six inches of rain fell over a 36-hour period. The park encompasses more than 747,000 acres along the central western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in east-central California. Although the park said it did not have direct measurements, it said that “sensors suggest a few feet of snow fell at the higher elevations,” and that the snow level for much of the storm “was high,” which caused rivers and creeks “to rise substantially.” The Merced River at the Pohono Bridge rose 8.5 feet, the park said, noting it was 1.5 feet below flood stage. At 2,425 feet high, Yosemite Falls is the tallest waterfall in North America. Its peak flow usually occurs in May, after most of the park’s snow melts, but by August it often slows to a trickle or is completely dry. Storms in the late fall can help restore the falls. Video showed the nearly dry falls on Saturday, followed by a gushing flow of water by Tuesday. “It was great to see so much water back in the not only Yosemite Falls, but our region’s rivers and streams too,” said Tony McDaniel, a spokesman for the Yosemite Mariposa County Tourism Bureau. He said the falls look like how they would in the spring. “The rain was very welcomed, and to see Yosemite not only bursting with fall colors, but also rushing water again, is a beautiful sight to see, and I think everyone in the region is happy for it,” he said. The rainfall was the result of two storms that converged in the Bay Area, bringing floods, high winds and some much-needed rain to California, which has wrestled with large wildfires and severe drought conditions that have been brought on by climate change. “It’s a rare event,” Brian Ochs, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Hanford, Calif., said of the heavy rainfall. “It’s not just in October or anytime during the year.” Evidence He said part of the reason for the replenished flow was the parched soil from the past few months. “The dry soil may have been less likely to absorb the water,” he said. Claim San Francisco saw at least four inches of rain in a 24-hour period, the city’s fourth wettest day ever, the Weather Service said on Monday. Sacramento also set a daily record, with more than five inches of rain. Forecasters paid tribute with a haiku: Evidence We did ask for rain We begged and pleaded for it And boy did it come Claim But the record rains will not end California’s ongoing drought. Rebuttal Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom extended the state’s drought emergency and asked residents to redouble their water conservation efforts. Claim This has been California’s second driest year on record, with near-record low storage in the state’s largest reservoirs, according to the governor’s office. Evidence Severe drought conditions, worsened by climate change, continue to affect much of the Western United States and even the northern part of the Great Plains. Claim